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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



DWELLERS IN TENTS 



Dwellers in Tents 



AND OTHER SERMONS 



BY 



. 



FREDERIC E. DEWHURST 

Pastor of Plymouth Church 
indianapolis, indiana 




\+c\ v^ n 



INDIANAPOLIS AND KANSAS CITY 

THE BOWEN-MERR1LL COMPANY 

M DCCC XCV11 



H- 



THE LIBRARY 
OF CONGRESS 



,V 



^> 



Copyright, 1897 

BY 

THE BOWEN-MEERILL CO. 



l/ z, 3 



TO MY WIFE 

WHOSE CONSTANT INSPIRATION 

AND 

COMPANIONSHIP OF SPIRIT 

HAVE 

MADE WHAT IS WORTHIEST IN THIS BOOK 

ALREADY HERS 

IT IS GRATEFULLY INSCRIBED 



CONTENTS 



i 

PAGE. 

Dwellers in Tents i 

II 
The Fountain of Life 21 

III 
An Encounter with God 39 

IV 
The Book that Could Not be Opened 57 

V 
Unregarded Prophets 78 

VI 
The Summum-Bonum 93 

VII 
The Master Light of Our Seeing 109 

VIII 
The Question that Could Not be Answered 124 

IX 
The Reserves of Life 147 

X 

Taking Time to Live 165 

XI 
The Inexhaustible Christ 183 

XII 
Finding Life 3 201 



I 

DWELLERS IN TENTS 

Jer. xxxv. 7. — All your days ye shall dwell in tents. 

fHE life of the tent describes the no- 
madic and pastoral phase of human 
existence. It is that period of life 
when the balance between man and nature 
is on the side of nature. Environment is 
stronger than the spirit within man. He is 
dependent on nature and follows her about. 
The time comes at length when he masters 
nature, triumphs over her forces, asserts 
himself and makes nature come to him. 
Civilization begins when the scale tips in 
that direction ; when man, instead of nature, 
is master of the situation. 

But although the nomadic life is a pass- 
ing phase in the process of human history, 
although a wider civilization asserts itself 
against it and wipes it out, we can, never- 
1 



gwjelljetfs in Qznts 

theless, look back upon it, feel its beauty 
and realize its quiet strength. Its attrac- 
tion to us lies in its simplicity, its artless- 
ness, its lack of fevered anxiety and care. 
The tent is pitched where grass is fresh and 
sweet, and when the flocks and herds have 
cropped it close, the happy nomads know 
that in an hour they can put their transient 
city on the backs of camels and seek new 
pasturage beside the still waters where the 
herbage is yet fresh and tender ; and when 
the circle is complete the journey will begin 
again. It is a perpetually moving city ; 
the roots of life can not strike deep into the 
soil ; it is not a condition where the perma- 
nent arts of life can flourish ; nor amid 
such scenes can the heart of man be torn 
asunder over the social problems. The 
wants of man are few ; his passions and 
desires are elemental ; his aspirations are 
bounded by the circle which his herds are 
able to graze. The one word which de- 
scribes it all is " temporariness '' ; its watch- 
word is, — "We have here no continuing 
city." 

I have taken a text this morning out 

2 



^wzXUvs in gjetxts 

of the nomadic life ; but the words were 
spoken at the time of a highly developed 
civilization ; they are words of protest 
and reaction. The prophet Jeremiah had 
brought certain representatives of the 
Rechabites before him, had set wine be- 
fore them and tried to persuade them to 
drink. But the Rechabites were total ab- 
stainers ; and their abstinence was only 
one element in their protest against civiliza- 
tion itself; for civilization in their eyes 
meant luxury, effeminateness and corrup- 
tion. They tell Jeremiah that they had 
always faithfully kept the commandment of 
the founder of their order, not only to drink 
no wine, but to " build no houses, nor sow 
seed, nor plant vineyards, nor have any" ; 
and to " dwell in tents all their days." They 
declared that they had obeyed all these di- 
rections except, when Nebuchadnezzar 
came conquering into the land, they had, 
through fear of the Chaldeans and Syrians, 
sought temporary refuge in Jerusalem. 

Then Jeremiah made their fidelity and 
obedience a text for reproof of the Jews, 
drunk with luxury and ease. He takes this 
3 



gwzlUxs in gmts 

reaction into a life of nomadic simplicity as 
a means of rebuking the lethargy and cor- 
ruption which he, in common with all the 
prophets, so keenly perceived in the life 
around him. 

As an incident of history this seems some- 
what remote from us. Even the Rechabites 
with their fidelity and abstinence seem a lit- 
tle beyond the pale of our immediate inter- 
ests. But there is one phrase which comes 
echoing down the years and is prophetic of 
our human experience beyond the immedi- 
ate intent of the words themselves, — "All 
your days ye shall dwell in tents." A 
thought is hidden in these words which 
haunts the mind as descriptive of human 
history and experience in some of their 
deeper meanings. 

Let us remind ourselves once more what 
is symbolized by dwelling in tents. It is 
the temporary as against the permanent 
aspect of life ; it is the picture of mankind 
on the eternal march, contrasted with the 
picture of mankind settled down to the 
ease and comfort of fixed habitations. The 
tent life is subject to the conditions which 
4 



^wzlUxs in gjetxts 

surround it. The life of the "continuing 
city" has subjected those conditions to 
itself. The life of the tent contains within 
itself the initiative of movement; the life of 
the fixed habitation must first of all over- 
come the inertia of its own repose and per- 
manence. 

We shall try to see whether this de- 
scribes a truth of human experience ; but 
before doing so let us be sure that we do 
not confuse this thought with two other 
thoughts which have some kinship with it. 

There is, first of all, the despondent rejec- 
tion of life because it contains the elements 
of illusion and change. The spirit of melan- 
choly and despair has touched many of the 
finest souls of the present age, and has 
smitten the strings of their harps into silence 
or subdued them into minor strains. One 
can not truly interpret certain great phases 
of the art and literature of this age until he 
realizes that many have been profoundly 
touched with this sense of the transientness 
of life, of life not merely in the form of 
personal existence, but in its great ideals, 
its convictions and faiths. 
5 



" From scarped cliff and quarried stone 
She cries 'a thousand types are gone: 
I care for nothing, all shall go,' " 

is the lament of one ; while another takes 
up the mournful chant in a different strain : 

" Now he is dead! Far hence he lies 
In the lorn Syrian town; 
And on his grave, with shining eyes, 
The Syrian stars look down." 

The despondency of life which touches 
the finer spirits of the race sifts down at 
length into the general life. Lamentations 
over the disappointments and illusions of 
life are heard from many voices, from all 
sorts and conditions of life. ''This is just the 
trouble," many are saying always, ' 'there is 
nothing certain about this life ; nothing to be 
relied upon ; nothing fixed and permanent. 
Yes, it is the fact ; we do dwell in tents all 
our days. We are at the mercy of the piti- 
less forces of this strange and changing 
world. 5 ' 

Here, then, is one way of applying this 
doctrine to life ; the result is the paralysis of 
strength, the defeat of endeavor. 
6 



Another use of the doctrine is described 
by the word asceticism. Let us clearly un- 
derstand what asceticism is ; let us not con- 
fuse it with any past form in which it has 
expressed itself, such as monasticism. The 
root meaning of asceticism is discipline ; 
the Greek Askesis, from which the word 
is derived, was the discipline of the Greek 
athlete for the race. But in history and 
usage the fundamental idea of asceticism 
has been repression and privation ; it is the 
negative discipline of life ; it is the surren- 
der of some elements of life in order that 
the remaining elements may be saved and 
nourished the better. 

Now the ascetic ideal also rests upon the 
belief that we dwell in tents ; that we have 
here no continuing city. Its earlier expres- 
sions took the form of contempt for the flesh 
and for the world ; sought retirement and 
solitude in order that the soul might be 
trained through prayer and vigils, through 
fasts and discipline, for its celestial home. 
This is the picture brought most naturally 
before us when we think of asceticism ; it is 



gvozXUvs in gjetxts 

" other-worldliness " ; it is a refined and 
sublimated selfishness. 

But the ascetic spirit may linger after 
this individual form of saving one's own 
soul has been rejected ; it does survive in 
many forms of doing good to others, the 
motive to which is of the noblest and most 
unselfish character. The impulse of the 
old spirit is so strong upon the world that 
generous hearts, even after they have come 
to see that life is not for the purpose of get- 
ting one's own soul out of the world, but is 
for service, still imagine that there is a 
radical conflict between individual welfare 
and service of others ; sacrifice of self still 
means repression of self, means the belief 
that the good and beneficent use of life for 
one's self must be surrendered, if good is 
to come to other lives. This is indeed a 
strange survival of the ascetic ideal, but we 
can not fail to recognize it in many of the 
best meant and most devoted kinds of 
human service. 

There is, to be sure, oftentimes a tem- 
porary and superficial conflict between the 
individual and the general good, but there 



can be no radical and real conflict. Mr. 
Lowell stated the relation of these two 
things in terms of profound insight, when 
he thus summed up the meaning of the 
vision of Sir Launfal : 

" Not what we give bu-t what we share, 
For the gift without the giver is bare." 

"Not what we give, but what we share," 
that is the doctrine of the New Humanity, 
of the better philanthropy. The sacrifice 
of self which leaves self poorer, the rejec- 
tion of the wealth of beauty, light, knowl- 
edge, all the great gains of life through the 
ages, in order that other men may be pulled 
up into what is thought to be a saving of 
them, — this may be infinitely noble and 
generous, but it still has in it elements of the 
old ascetic ideal, the ideal of repression 
and contempt. It is what we share, not 
what we surrender, that uplifts the life of 
those whom we would help. The claiming 
of our birthright that we may have where- 
with to ennoble other life ; the glad accept- 
ance of every good gift that cometh down 
from the Father of light, but the acceptance 
9 



gw&XUvs in Qzntz 

of it as something to be held for all, — this is 
the real sacrifice, this is the final service. 
In that faith man may go forth with the re- 
juvenated watchword of the followers of 
Huss, — "The cup for all; the cup for all." 
Let us not misunderstand it. I do not 
mean that a generous soul, fired with the 
love of service, can live in a calculating 
spirit, or submit every deed to a quan- 
titative analysis to make sure that nothing 
goes out in service for which an equivalent 
to self is not seen on its way to take the 
place of the good deed ; but there can be no 
enduring motive for bringing light and 
beauty and enlargement of life to others, 
except upon thepre-supposition that what is 
good for others is good for ourselves ; Jesus 
was wise enough to plant his ethics upon 
the principle, which is echoed in Sir Laun- 
fal's vision, when He said: "Thou shalt 
love thy neighbor as thyself." The word 
"as," the shortest word in the sentence, is 
the pivot upon which the doctrine of Christ 
hangs. "Thy neighbor as thyself." You are 
not to throw away any good ; but you are to 
claim all good as your own, and then that 
10 



QwzXUxs itx Jgjettls 

good, by God's grace and love, you shall 
share. Not repression and surrender, but 
expansion and self-realization ; the univer- 
sal hunger of heart and mind fed from the 
bounty of God's generous table and that 
bounty shared and the loaves distributed 
through the eternal miracle of generous 
hearts until the multitude is fed, — this is the 
second table of the law. 

The gentle and unassuming woman who 
told us the story of Hull House the other 
night, said one thing almost as an aside, so 
unostentatiously was it said, yet the whole 
significance of the Settlement idea is dis- 
closed in that remark, namely : that the 
people who went there did not leave behind 
them the acquisitions of knowledge, art, 
culture and refinement, but took these 
things with them in order that through a 
natural social intercourse they might share 
them. 

Is not this the key to a new and more ef- 
fective type of social service? The Settle- 
ment is not essential to it ; it is only an in- 
cidental illustration. Yet it is a revival of 
the principle of service laid down by Christ. 
ti 



§wz\Uic& in Qznts 

The ascetic ideal and practice are not his ; 
they are the perversion of his idea through 
the temporary triumph of oriental ideas of 
life. 

But let us now return to the main consid- 
eration. In what sense is the dwelling in 
tents symbolical of some of the deepest and 
most permanent conditions of our life ? 

To begin with what is most external and 
perhaps most apparent, the universe itself 
is the greatest nomad we know anything 
about ; not in the sense that the countless 
orbs of which it is composed are forever re- 
volving in closed cycles upon which they 
return and return again, but in the sense 
that the life of the universe from lowest to 
highest forms has been a constant forsak- 
ing of exhausted and imperfect conditions 
for those more fresh and significant. "A 
thousand types are gone," indeed, although 
the inference of despair is not the true in- 
ference to draw from that admitted fact. 

But how evident to us is this " unhasting, 
unresting " movement of the natural world 
since first the creative word was spoken 
that began to organize the void and form- 

12 



gwrjelljevs in getxts 

less waste into a universe ! What seeming 
prodigality and waste ! What laborious 
effort to create a type which at the mo- 
ment of its perfection is thrown aside, that 
a still better may be created ! It all seems 
like a fulfillment of the formula of the old 
Greek philosopher Heraclitus, — "All things 
are fleeting ; the devouring fire is their 
symbol ! " 

So it seems as if this primeval, nomadic 
impulse had been imparted to the universe 
itself, and that the law by which it has 
developed, by which its ceaseless develop- 
ment is still proceeding, were but one 
gigantic illustration of these words, — "Ye 
shall dwell in tents all your days." There 
is nothing static, nothing permanent in the 
forms which the universe has taken on ; 
the only permanent element is the unity of 
purpose which directs it to the far-off end. 

But to come within the circle of our hu- 
man experience, is it not evident that in 
the domain of our intellectual life, in our 
interpretation of the world in terms of 
thought, we and our fathers have dwelt in 
tents all the days of our lives? We arrive 
13 



giujelUvs in gjetxis 

at no final and inclusive interpretation of 
life. It almost seems as if we could hear 
nature saying again, " a thousand creeds 
are gone, I care for nothing, all shall go." 

There are two views of life which 
through the ages have struggled with each 
other for supremacy ; the two are skepticism 
and dogmatism. Skepticism, laying hold 
of this evident fact of the temporary ele- 
ment in life, of the constant overturning of 
opinion, change of view, reconstruction of 
philosophies and theologies, declares that 
nothing can be permanent ; that there is no 
abiding knowledge of anything ; that we 
must forever wander between two worlds 
" one dead, the other powerless to be 
born." It regards illusion as identical with 
delusion, and begs man to settle down con- 
tentedly into the narrow circle of the things 
that are positive, and live his life out among 
them. 

Dogmatism, on the other hand, in frantic 
effort to find some anchorage for the spirit, 
some permanent hold for the mind upon 
truth, drives down its own artificial stakes ; 
it creates an authority for man to tie him- 
H 



^wzXlzxs in gjetxts 

self up to ; and always raises the cry of 
" No fair," when the validity of its self- 
constituted authority is called in question. 
If you ask what the world rests upon, it 
tells you confidently, — Upon the back of 
the tortoise ; and if you ask what the tor- 
toise rests upon, it as confidently replies, — 
Upon the back of the elephant. But if you 
ask what the elephant rests upon, dogma- 
tism retorts that this is an ultimate question 
and you have no right to ask it. Dogma- 
tism insists that we must have a permanent 
habitation, must dwell in a continuing city ; 
skepticism says, — Behold the ruins of all 
your cities ; they are all razed to the 
ground ; a thousand creeds are gone ; they 
all shall go. 

Now the answer to skepticism and dog- 
matism alike lies hidden in this symbolic 
fact of life. We dwell in tents ; for a tem- 
porary interpretation of life, a temporary 
formulation of truth does not mean the futil- 
ity of interpreting life or of seeking truth, 
any more than the scaffolding built about 
the rising walls of the cathedral implies 
that the cathedral is the flimsy structure of 
15 



gurjettjevs itt gents 

an hour. Our knowledge is temporary in- 
deed ; our religious and social creeds are 
conjectures of the truth, hints and surmises 
of what is ever greater than our power to 
formulate. It is as Paul said, "We know in 
part; we prophesy (or surmise) in part." Our 
knowledge is the scaffolding around the 
growing building which we must allow nei- 
ther skepticism to identify with the building 
itself, nor dogmatism to nail and rivet 
together as if the scaffolding itself were per- 
manent. The temporariness of our knowl- 
edge is in reality a witness to the perma- 
nence of that wmich knowledge tries to 
compass ; it is " a beam in darkness ; let it 
grow." The bread we eat to-day does not 
satisfy our hunger to-morrow. All food is 
temporary and must be renewed, but it is 
conclusive evidence of a permanent hunger 
which it has power to satisfy. 

When I look back on this bewildering, 
changing history of human thought, see 
creed displacing creed, opinion taking the 
place of opinion, faiths moving on, disap- 
pearing, emerging in transformed condi- 
tions, it seems to me the most inspiring 
16 



^wzllzxz in gmts 

thing I know anything about. The very 
temporariness of it is itself the witness to 
the kinship between the spirit of man and 
the spirit of God ; it betokens man's hold 
upon the absolute and eternal ; he moves 
along with it, and as his spirit expands it 
casts off the shells which once provided an 
ample abode. 

" Dwelling in tents"! — that is no Pyr- 
rhonism ; no denial of the power to know 
and to have companionship with the In- 
finite. The ancient nomads were condi- 
tioned by their surroundings j but they were 
not fools ; they knew where pasturage was 
and they followed after it with their flocks. 
And the man who follows the Shepherd of 
the universe may be led in devious ways, 
follow along unknown regions, but he will 
be led into green pastures and beside the 
still waters. (t We know in part," that was 
the final word of Paul, the word of rever- 
ent Christian agnosticism ; for who can 
conceive this great world of matter or spirit 
in so small a way that he will not exclaim 
at every stage in his career, " His great- 
ness is unsearchable and his ways past 
2 17 



gwzlUxs in $tnts 

finding out " ! The bane of life, the poison 
of its secret fountains, is indeed a radical 
skepticism, such a skepticism as persuades 
man he can know absolutely nothing about 
the great and permanent realities ; but dog- 
matism is the stone offered in the place of 
bread, the scorpion for the fish. The sweet 
and satisfying bread which nourishes and 
strengthens is the spirit of teachableness, 
openness of mind and heart, willingness to 
disbelieve keeping faithful company with 
the desire to believe. 

Skepticism which denies that we can 
know anything of the great realities ; dog- 
matism, which is sure that we know it all ; 
teachableness which is eager to exchange 
its ignorance for knowledge, its partial 
knowledge for more complete, — these are 
the three possible attitudes to life ; but it is 
teachableness alone which dwells in tents 
all its days ; it has no continuing city, but 
it has continuing pasturage and its soul is 
satisfied. 

But finally there is an attitude to life which 
gives it the sense of stability and perma- 
nence, the permanence as of " a city which 
18 



gw&XUvs in gjetxts 

hath foundations ;" for after all is said man's 
search for truth is not the noblest thing 
about man's life ; it is very noble, but there 
is one thing that is nobler still. Did I say 
that Paul spoke his final word when he 
said: " We know in part? " No, it is not 
his final word, for he went on to say that 
there are three things which in the midst 
of all this change and movement of life do 
not change, they abide. These three are 
faith, hope and love. 

What does it teach us but this — that 
it is not the intellectual attitude to life but 
the practical attitude that is after all the 
main thing? Life is not an abstract prob- 
lem ; it is a throbbing and concrete reality. 
It is, therefore, to be solved not in terms of 
abstract knowledge, but of concrete faith 
and courage, hope and endurance and love. 

Will you have life clear and real to you? 
Will you have it a permanent and solid 
fact? Knowledge vanishes away, but faith, 
hope and love abide. The test of the 
permanence and assurance of life is in 
the attitude of our hearts to this great re- 
ality of life. Are we in sympathetic rela- 

r 9 



gurcIUvs ixx Qmts 

tions with it? Are we meeting its experi- 
ences with courage, with patience and with 
hope? Does our love illumine what is dark 
and doubtful? These are the questions we 
need most often and most solemnty to ask. 
When a man makes the answer in the 
practical allegiance of his life with these 
triumphant forces the voices of fear and 
cynicism, of doubt and hesitation, are 
drowned out. Not by the knowledge that 
vanishes away, but by the love that abides 
through all change and all disaster our 
deepest spiritual problems are solved, and 
we learn at last that the final name for life 
and for the world and for God is love. It 
is the Christ-word and the Christ-solution. 



$foje ^jcrtttxtaitx of %ifz 

II 
THE FOUNTAIN OF LIFE 

Psalm xxxvi. 9. — For with Thee is the fountain of life. 
In Thy light shall we see light. 

OpHE most of us, at one time or an- 
4jLy other, become aware of the partial- 
'uN^K ness of our views of life, the frac- 
tional, rather than the integral, way we 
have of looking at things, the fragmentary 
and unrelated character of many of our 
best judgments and opinions, This par- 
tialness is spread over the whole history 
of man, but does not always proceed from 
the same causes. We are prepared to find 
this lack in man's earliest history, when 
people knew actually so little about the 
world in which they lived, when there was 
no written history, no literature of the past, 
no tabulated knowledge of the passing life, 
no intercommunication of any sort. 

Just because man dwelt apart, each in his 
little section of the earth, and just because 
he must produce, in a rough and primitive 
2 1 



£K& ^oxxntKin of gif je 

way, nearly everything he had, it was not 
to be expected that his range would be very 
wide ; that his outlook would stretch very 
far beyond his tent door and the limited 
circle within which his flocks found pastur- 
age. "From sea to sea and from the river 
to the ends of the earth" gauged man's 
outlook at one time ; "as far as the Roman 
legions have pierced'' was the proud esti- 
mate of a later time, and when Columbus 
sailed the unknown seas, so small was the 
world that he expected, after not many 
days' sailing, to come around to the shores 
of India. 

But this limitation of outlook has passed 
away. Men do not dwell in solitude and 
separation ; they touch elbows, they con- 
gregate in cities, they move across the 
continent and traverse the seas with sur- 
passing swiftness. They have compassed 
the earth ; they know what is in it and 
under it, and are almost in possession of 
the object glass which shall bring into 
view the ships in the canals of Mars. But 
the very possibility of this greater life has 
brought on a new partialness and super- 

22 



gfoe ^onntKin of %it z 

ficialness, for, in order that all mankind 
may have the larger life, the enjoyment 
of more things, it is impossible for the indi- 
vidual members of mankind to do many 
things with efficiency and to the profit of 
the whole. So, as the old partialness and 
limitation grew out of the isolated life and 
the multiplicity of work, the modern par- 
tialness and limitation grow out of the or- 
ganization of life and the specialization of 
work. 

There is in our modern life a wealth of 
toil, of knowledge, of research, of accom- 
plishment that would astonish the ancient 
world ; but one feels so often about all this 
vast and bewildering array of things that it 
is unrelated and disorganized ; that al- 
though it is wealth in abundance, it does 
not find its unity in a commonwealth. 

There is a vast amount of what one might 
call a class or professional consciousness — 
a tendency to look at things from the stand- 
point of the special function through which 
one is serving the world, and a correspond- 
ing tendency to magnify that function out 
of all proportion. 

23 



gJxs gxrmtiaitt jof %ifz 

The different professions and arts develop 
their special techniques and create their 
special vocabularies, so that a stranger is 
debarred from an understanding of what 
goes on in the world outside his own small 
sphere. Each of us sees light in the light of 
his own torch, and in the opinion of each 
the world is just that part of it which re- 
flects the flickering light which he bears. 

The zealous churchman believes that 
the world will be redeemed when it comes 
finally to accept his doctrine of the church 
and its accompaniments. The zealous rad- 
ical believes that what mankind needs 
above everything else is emancipation from 
ignorance and superstitious folly. The 
man in whom the sense of law and organi- 
zation is strong thinks the world needs more 
and better legislation, the wider regulation 
of the details of life by the state ; his 
neighbor of the opposite temperament 
thinks we need less law and more liberty ; 
less organization and a stronger assertion 
of individual rights. 

The different kinds of consciousness ex- 
isting, the different attitudes to life proceed- 
24 



gfeje ^mmtaiix of gtfie 

ing from the different spheres of work, sug- 
gest the many colored lights which are 
flashed upon the stage to give variety of 
effect to its tableaux and scenes. So we 
get a variety of hue from the clerical con- 
sciousness and the legal consciousness, 
the medical, the journalistic, the pedagog- 
ical, the artistic and the literary. Each 
sees light in his own light and interprets 
life by the color of the medium through 
which his light is thrown. 

So whether the partial outlook on life 
comes from doing everything in a narrow 
environment, as the primitive man did, or 
from doing one thing in a wide and diver- 
sified environment, as the modern man 
does, it is still the partial outlook, it is still 
seeing light in our own light. 

So I think we shall understand why we 
have taken this text to-day from the ancient 
psalm. Let us turn to the words again for 
a moment. A portion of this psalm is full 
of poetic and religious feeling. It would 
be difficult for the thought and feeling of 
any age to surpass the dignity and rever- 
ence of its attitude to the One over all : 
2 5 



" Thy loving kindness, O Lord, is in the heavens ; 
Thy faithfulness reacheth unto the skies. 

Thy righteousness is like the mountains of God ; 
Thy judgments are a great deep. 
How precious is thy loving kindness, O God! 
And the children of men take refuge under the 

shadow of thy wings. 
For with thee is the fountain of life, 
In thy light shall we see light." 

Now, all this is cast in the poetic mold, 
and it is the expression of deep religious 
feeling, the feeling of reverence, depend- 
ence and trust. 

But all genuine religious feeling rests 
upon some basis of fact, of reality. There 
is some conviction out of which the feeling 
grows and blossoms. What then is the 
underlying conviction out of which this fine 
poetry grows? What is the standpoint of a 
man who believes that he and his fellow- 
man are to see light in the light of God? 

The answer is certainly obvious enough ; 
at any rate the conclusion which the beau- 
tiful metaphor brings before our own minds 
is obvious enough, for men can not see 
light in God's light unless this universe of 
God's is a great consistent whole, a single 
26 



thing, a garment woven entire throughout, 
a universe pervaded by one kind of intelli- 
gence, controlled by one kind of principle 
and idea, working toward one great pur- 
pose. If it is such a universe as that, if it 
is subject to such unity of thought and pur- 
pose as that, if there is a great idea march- 
ing through it, and the light of a clear and 
intelligent aim flashing upon it, then cer- 
tainly it is not irrational to believe that men 
dwelling in that universe, themselves capa- 
ble of thinking and of forming purposes, 
can get the clew to this universe in which 
they live, can come into touch with the 
thought and purpose running through it, 
and see light in the light that shines all 
about them. 

This is the bed rock of this poet's thought, 
as it is also the bed rock of all religion, of 
all philosophy, and of all science ; for these 
different pursuits and attitudes to life are 
ultimately but so many efforts of finding 
the universal bond which binds this scat- 
tered and fragmentary life together, of find- 
ing some principle which will give cohesion 
and consistency to things. 
2 7 



Let us suppose, then, that any man in 
search of the interpretation of life, in search 
of a real adjustment of his own life to the 
world around him, starts out with this rudi- 
mentary and almost amorphous idea, shape- 
less as the block dug out of the quarry, 
the idea, namely, that there is just one 
kind of law and purpose running through 
this universe ; that mind is mind and 
thought is thought wherever he runs across 
it ; that truth and goodness and right are 
universal, valid for all times and for all 
parts of the universe ; that he is just as sure 
of that validity as he is of the presence of 
certain chemical elements in the sun when 
their characteristic lines reveal themselves 
in the spectroscope. 

Can anything be more basal or more re- 
assuring than such a conviction as that? for 
although this great shapeless block which 
one digs out of the quarry of reality does 
not resemble any of the graven images of 
God which the various religions and the- 
ologies have formed, it is worth more 
than many of them. It were better to set 
up in the temple of our faith just this 
28 



Qhz ^ountzitx of %xfz 

rough block of an idea of God, if we knew 
it to be hewn out of the quarry of reality, 
than to bow before the daintiest and most 
perfect image of the craftsmen who know 
how to overlay with gold and silver the 
fabrications of their own far-fetched logic 
and speculations. 

If I know that the deep yellow line of the 
spectrum means the same thing for that 
far-away sun that it means for this bit of 
mineral dug out of the earth, I have 
linked the universe together with a mighty 
bond ; and if I know that this fragment of 
truth which I have gained in my own ex- 
perience has its counterpart in a greater 
truth running throughout the universe, I 
have come upon that which may indeed 
well be "the master light of all our seeing." 

Now let us see what it implies. In the 
first place, is it not the corrective and the 
denial of all real agnosticism? I say of all 
real agnosticism, for there are two kinds. 
The agnosticism which is the counterpart 
of the flippant dogmatism, of the cheap and 
tawdry things that pass current for devo- 
tion and faith and religion, or the swift and 
29 



Sfre |?0Uittairc of %itz 

merciless denunciation of those who can not 
repeat the shibboleth, of those who stand in 
awe and hesitation in the presence of life's 
sanctities, and who cherish the reverence 
that dares repeat with Paul, — "We know 
in part, we prophesy in part," — the agnos- 
ticism which is the answer to cant and to 
the caricature of all genuine religion, is, to 
say the very least, the sign of returning 
sanity and health. It is to no man's dis- 
honor to refuse to chatter like a magpie 
over the fundamental realities of life, when 
he hears a voice calling in his ear, — " Re- 
move thy shoes from off thy feet, for the 
place whereon thou standest is holy 
ground." 

There is an agnosticism which is in the 
interest of faith and of all the reverences of 
life, such as Mr. Gilder voices in the familiar 
lines : 



" Thou God supreme, — I too, I too believe! 
But oh! forgive if this one human word, 
Binding the deep and breathless thought of thee 
And my own conscience with an iron band, 
Stick in my throat. I can not say it, thus, — 
This ' I believe ' that doth thyself obscure ; 

30 



gftje gjomtxtaitx fxt %lfz 

This rod to smite ; this barrier ; this blot 
On thy most unimaginable face 
And soul of majesty." 

But agnosticism of the real and radical 
sort is a different thing. A real agnosti- 
cism puts the force of permanent and uni- 
versal truth into the casual words of the 
old prophet and takes its stand upon this 
platform, — "My thoughts are not your 
thoughts, and my ways are not your ways, 
saith the Lord.'' A real agnosticism be- 
lieves that clouds and darkness are round 
about the Infinite Being, not as a tran- 
sient but as a permanent condition of his 
existence. It holds that our ignorance of 
the great verities is not merely the igno- 
rance of a limited experience, but the re- 
sult of an incapacity to know ; of the lack 
of any certainty that the laws of our present 
experience are also the laws of life lying 
beyond our present experience. There- 
fore we can not unify these present ex- 
periences of ours ; we can not give them 
universal validity. We can work along on 
the hypothesis that two and two are four, 
but we have no assurance that somewhere 
3i 



there are not beings to whom two and two 
are five. 

When the dark line crosses the spectrum 
revealing in element after element the 
material identity of the members of the 
solar system, we exclaim almost spontane- 
ously : "The things that are not seen are 
present, they are the eternal things;" but 
if agnosticism is the final truth, then there 
is no spectrum line flashing upon us the as- 
surance of a fundamental identity between 
mind and mind, the assurance that truth is 
truth, and love is love, wherever in the vast 
spaces of the universe they find expression. 

Now, I do not know that there is any 
demonstration of these things*; I do not 
anticipate the time when it will be pos- 
sible to prove the existence of God, as one 
proves that the angles of a triangle are 
equal to two right angles. For almost un- 
consciously there lurks somewhere in the 
process of proof the very thing we set out 
to prove. Even if we proclaim with syllo- 
gistic assurance that the Infinite Being, 
" will not put us to permanent intellectual 
confusion," we somehow assume that this 
32 



gfeje gjcwtttaitx jcrf %ifz 

Infinite Being has the character which our 
great conclusion claims for him. It is al- 
most impossible to avoid reasoning in a 
circle when one is reasoning upon any of 
the ultimate things. 

But after all may it not be for the very 
reason that these ultimate things are so sim- 
ple in their character ; that the difficulties 
we raise over them are manufactured diffi- 
culties ; that when we try to prove we can 
after all do hardly more than assert, just as 
when we try to explain the light we can 
only declare it to be that by means of 
which we see ? 

And of all the fundamental simplicities 
none perhaps is either so fundamental or 
so simple as this conviction that the uni- 
verse is one, that God's ways are after all 
our ways and ours are his, that there is an 
unbroken identity connecting earth with 
heaven, the seen with the unseen, the 
daily round and the familiar experience 
with their eternal pattern. We may almost 
begin where In Memoriam concludes in 
the conviction that there is one God — 



33 



Igfoje ^omxtxin of |^if s 

" That God, which ever lives and loves, 
One God, one law, one element, 
And one far-off divine event 
To which the whole creation moves." 

2. And now let us think of one more 
truth that is implied. If we see light in 
God's light because of the underlying unity, 
the identity of divine and human run- 
ning through all things, then this very 
unity becomes the means by which we cor- 
rect our individual estimates of life, the 
standard by which we judge all our thoughts 
and aims. Our thoughts and ways may in 
truth be very far from being the thoughts 
and ways of God, not because of a neces- 
sary disparity between them, nor because 
we fail to have the means of knowing that 
they are alike should they chance to be, 
but they may be different simply because 
through ignorance or intention we have 
failed to bring them up to the light and see 
them in his light. 

There was a time when men used to say, 

with a good deal of vehemence, that if 

there were a Supreme Being in the universe 

he must be too much absorbed in the man- 

34 



agement of his infinite domain to have par- 
ticular and constant interest in the affairs 
of finite men. That certainly is the con- 
clusion of a very barren philosophy, quite 
as barren as the religious philosophy which 
it opposes. Its conception of infiniteness 
is simply that of largeness ; it assumes that 
if one is actually great enough to create the 
worlds and hold them in their marvelous 
courses, individual men must dwindle into 
insignificance in his thought ; if God sits 
on the circles of the earth men must be as 
grasshoppers in his sight. With that idea 
of infinity the shepherd looks into the starry 
skies and he shrivels up to nothing and 
cries out, " What is man that thou art 
mindful of him? " 

If this assumption is right, the conclusion 
also is right ; if this idea of infiniteness is 
the true idea, it would seem well-nigh ab- 
surd to imagine the Infinite Being as inter- 
ested in the details of our individual or our 
collective life. When we look up into the 
starry skies and realize, as the ancient 
shepherd did not realize, that all we see is 
but an infinitesimal portion of the whole 
35 



universe, — does it not for the moment seem 
absurd to imagine God watching the flight 
of the sparrow, or giving us in any real 
sense our daily bread ? Does it not seem 
preposterous to talk about a divine destiny 
for the nation or to imagine the Infinite Be- 
ing giving even a passing thought to all 
the things which have kept this republic 
on the rack during its history ? Men have 
lived and died ; nations have sprung up, 
have flourished for a season and have 
passed away, even as the forest trees grow 
and flourish and rot again to fertilize the 
soil. What cares God who sits on the cir- 
cles of the earth and drives these count- 
less fiery steeds dashing eternally through 
space? 

This is the voice of the old barren phi- 
losophy to whom infinity is merely another 
name for bigness. But suppose infinity is 
instead another name for self-realization, 
for the fulfillment and revelation of the 
divine Self in all the onfaring of the finite 
life of man and of the world ! Suppose 
God, instead of being a passive spectator, a 
passionless and uninterested observer from 

36 



£1** ^onntuin of %ift 

the remote boundaries of the universe, is 
the very heart and passion and moving 
force of all this eager life as it develops and 
moves on ! Suppose that this political un- 
rest and strife is, in the deeper meaning of 
it, the presence of God himself, disclosing 
his thought and purpose in the very move- 
ment and vitality of human affairs ! Does 
it not give a new sense of the divine pres- 
ence as well as a new sanctity to these 
forms of life through which that presence 
manifests itself? 

There were some of the old Hebrew 
prophets who, in a somewhat rude and 
anthropomorphic way, got this idea of God 
as a man of war, fighting their battles with 
them, interested in the life of the common- 
wealth, and when we have stripped away 
the anthropomorphic symbolism and have 
given it the deeper spiritual setting, we 
have a vastly profounder and more rational 
idea of God than when we think of him 
as the vast, passive, absent-minded Arti- 
ficer, sitting on the remote borders of the 
boundless universe. 

It gives a new thrill of emotion, a new 
37 



She gountaitx of %ift 

touch of sincerity to our words when we 
pray for the peace of Jerusalem, for the 
peace of America, for the integrity and 
honor of the land we love ; it makes the 
words of Sidney Lanier seem more real 
and pertinent : 

" Long as thy God is God above, 
Thy brother every man below. 
So long, dear Land of all my love, 
Thy name shall shine, thy fame shall glow!" 

If inliniteness is, in truth, this sort of in- 
timacy with finiteness, then can we not 
discover how, in God's light, we surely 
shall see light ; for is not every impulse 
toward truth and honor, toward purity and 
justice, toward gentleness and love, toward 
magnanimity and brotherhood, every effort 
toward sweeter, saner, loftier life in the 
individual or the nation, a sign and proof to 
us that the heart of the Infinite God is beat- 
ing in all these pulses of our finite life? 

And the old words still ring in our ears 
with their new and profounder meaning : 

" With thee, O God, is the fountain of life 
In thv light shall we see light." 

38 



jut ittjcxrtttxfce* warn (&*a 

in 

AN ENCOUNTER WITH GOD 

Gen. xxxii. 24. — And Jacob was left alone ; and there 
wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day. 

(S|T seems incongruous and grotesque to 
p| portray a man wrestling bodily with 
c \_y God ; in the light of our present knowl- 
edge and feeling with regard to such rela- 
tions it may seem shocking to the moral 
sense. But we must remember in what 
conditions and in what stage of develop- 
ment these stories have their origin ; and 
we must not forget that they have their 
parallel in the history of nearly every peo- 
ple, in the record of nearly every religion. 
The Greeks were in a perpetual encounter 
with their divinities. The Hindoos re- 
garded it a part of the duty of their kings 
and heroes to " take the field with club and 
bow against the supernatural powers of 
evil." In the Scandinavian legends the 
god Thor is constantly challenged to fight 
by the giants of the people. The great 
39 



story of Prometheus is perhaps the pro- 
foundest of all those myths which portray 
man working out his destiny in combat 
with the forces that to his consciousness 
are organized as the supreme forces in the 
universe. 

Longfellow has given a version of a 
similar thought in the Indian lore, where 
Shingebis, the diver, comes out to wrestle 
naked upon the ice with the fierce North- 
wind, Kabibonokka, and Kabibonokka 
wrestles all night with the bold diver until 
the breaking of the day. 

" Till his panting breath grew fainter, 
Till his frozen grasp grew feebler, 
Till he reeled and staggered backward 
And retreated, baffled, beaten, 
To the kingdom of Wabasso, 
Hearing still the gusty laughter, 
Hearing Shingebis, the diver, 
Singing : " O Kabibonokka, 
You are but my fellow mortal." 

Man first came to the consciousness of 
his life in the midst of struggle with the 
elemental forces of nature. He found him- 
self contending with the fierce heat of the 
40 



sun, with the frost and ice of winter, with 
the blast of the north wind, with the earth- 
quake and the tempest, with the resistance 
of the soil and the Siren-like allurements of 
the sea. These forms and forces of nature 
were personified and worshiped. Man 
realized his dependence upon these mighty 
forces ; he was conscious of dread and fear, 
and yet his spirit rose up in resistance and 
he came to feel that his destiny was a 
destiny of perpetual conflict with those 
divinities of earth and sea and air which 
he could neither befriend nor cajole. 

I doubt if we can fully understand this 
story of Jacob wrestling with the angel un- 
til we view it in the light of the class of 
stories with which it belongs. It has its 
parallel in such myths and legends as these 
to which I have referred, and yet already 
it begins to difference itself from them in 
accordance with the controlling genius, 
the sublime mission of the Hebrew faith. 
Already in this story of Jacob, and perhaps 
almost without intention of the one who 
first gave it form, there begins to take shape 
the fact, than which there is none pro- 
4 1 



&n 'gncfixxxxUx Wiim mod 

founder or more radical in human life. 
Here is a man wrestling with God through 
the long night up to the breaking of the 
day. It is a personal encounter. He is 
triumphant but he comes off bearing the 
marks and the bruises of his conflict, and 
it ends in a transformation of character 
which was always represented in the He- 
brew thought by the change of name — "No 
longer shalt thou be called Jacob, but Is- 
rael, for thou hast striven with God and 
hast prevailed." 

The element which the story has in com- 
mon with similar stories and legends is the 
necessity for human struggle, the eternal 
need laid upon man to go into conflict with 
the elemental forces of the world and con- 
quer them ; but the step in advance in this 
legend is found in the hint and prophecy, 
shadowy though it be, of the ethical ele- 
ment in the struggle. Many of the le- 
gends which portray man's struggle with 
nature and with the forces of nature, which 
he has deified, are designed to show the 
superiority of man. He is the great being 
of the universe. He comes off victorious, 
42 



&u MnconnUx WCittx (&&& 

and his victory is tinged with contempt ; or 
if he is not victorious, but is still doomed to 
suffer, like Prometheus, he bears a brave 
heart, suffers like a hero, and still feels in 
his soul a contempt for the deity who has 
only power to show for his chief attribute. 

But we can not fail to detect another 
truth emerging from this Jacob legend. 
Man is still in conflict ; he wrestles with 
God ; but it is not a conflict for the sake of 
conquest and extermination ; it is not 
marked by contempt ; it is forced on by the 
resistless, eager question which Jacob 
voiced when he said, "Tell me, I pray 
thee, thy name." It is a struggle to get at 
the meaning of divinity, to penetrate the 
secret mystery of life, to unlock the doors 
to its hidden, inner experiences ; and the 
conflict issues in victory, yet not a victory 
in which man stands flushed and triumph- 
ant over his fallen foe, but triumphant be- 
cause through his struggle the might of the 
One with whom he fought has entered into 
him, though he come out of the conflict sore 
and bruised, bearing about in his body the 
marks of the dire encounter. 
43 



Jux gujcoxwlev WLith (&o& 

So in this far-off story, set in the shad- 
owy background of almost prehistoric con- 
ditions, we get glimpses of a law of the 
moral and spiritual achievements of man, a 
law which finds clearer expressions, higher 
manifestations as time goes on, but which 
is still truly prefigured in this long night- 
wrestle of a man with God in which the 
might of the immortal passed into the mor- 
tal man. And this law of spiritual achieve- 
ment, of spiritual revelation, I ask you to 
trace with me now a little further. We 
shall understand it better, perhaps, if we 
analyze it a little and think about one ele- 
ment in it at a time. 

First, there is the fact of the human 
struggle ; man has to wrestle for all he gets. 
He must fight with nature in some form for 
his daily bread. He must contend with 
the life and law within nature for the 
bread that satisfieth his soul. In all the 
thought and questioning of man from the 
beginning regarding the meaning and pos- 
sibility of revelation, there seems to be 
nothing more significant than the fact, 
dawning with some measure of clearness 
44 



Jw Igttjcjcrtmtje* WLitU &o& 

upon our time, that revelation is not a 
name for something apart from man and 
independent of him ; it is relative to man, 
dependent upon him. There is a pre- 
destined cooperation without which the 
knowledge of truth and the experience of 
life are impossible. 

Man's discovery of truth is the coun- 
terpart of God's revealing of it; the coun- 
terpart, I say, not the substitute for it. 
Yet, without this ceaseless activity and 
struggle of man how silent, how unrespon- 
sive, how meaningless the universe would 
be ! It might be likened to the warp in 
the loom ; it is there in long continuous 
threads. There is no fabric, no pattern, 
no solidity, no meaning. But the shuttle 
flies back and forth ; by incessant and re- 
peated effort the threads enter the embrace 
of the threads upon the loom ; color, pat- 
tern, solidity, fabric result. Can you say 
that the beautiful product belongs to the 
warp and not to the woof? Can you say 
that it belongs to the woof and not to the 
warp? It is the cooperation, the embrace, 



45 



J^tt gttcjcnmije* WLitU (&o& 

the firm union of the two which gives the 
finished result. 

So on this vast loom of the universe 
are arranged the endless threads of des- 
tiny, of truth, of experience, of life. There 
they are devoid of meaning, of achieve- 
ment, until the life of man in its end- 
less movement flies back and forth, and 
through the seeming antagonism, through 
the very oppositeness of nature and direc- 
tion, the unity of result is achieved. It in 
no wise detracts from the greatness, the 
wisdom, the absoluteness of God to find 
this cooperative necessity ; to learn that 
revelation has man's discovery as its count- 
erpart. 

But, after all, that is not the primary 
question ; the primary question is, — what is 
the fact? We must get our thought of the 
character of God from the nature of the 
facts we find. And we certainly know 
that this universe has ever been silent and 
speechless to man until he has himself given 
it an articulate voice ; he has been the 
interpreter of the silence ; the mute finger- 
speech of God, some man has read over 

4 6 



into vocal syllables for the instruction of 
his fellow-men. 

There is no thoughtful mind, no rever- 
ent heart, for whom this fact will for one 
moment banish the eternal reality of God. 
Can you not pray to-day and forever that 
God will give you your daily bread, al- 
though you are aware that God never di- 
rectly taught any man to bake bread, never 
taught him even how to sow wheat, how to 
grind it into flour? All this belongs to the 
infinite struggle, the ceaseless task. 

Can not your heart still respond to the 
old beautiful faith, "He healeth all our dis- 
eases " — although you have to remember, 
out of the very fullness of that faith, how 
step by step the knowledge of all healing 
processes and the staying of the ravages of 
disease and pestilence have been wrought by 
the wisdom, the skill, the profound pity and 
love of man for his fellow-man? Can you 
not plant yourself firmly upon the irrevoca- 
ble conviction that God is light, and that in 
him is no darkness at all, notwithstanding 
your added knowledge that all human lore 
and wisdom concerning the stars above us 
47 



Jitx gitcmttxte* WLxtft (&&& 

and the earth beneath us and the countless 
life that inhabits earth and sea, have been 
gathered, preserved, perpetuated by man 
himself? I can not conceive of these two 
things seeming contradictory except to the 
most superficial, the most indolent or the 
most irreverent soul. It is the cooperative 
law that is written all over life and that has 
found its working and its fulfillment ever 
since there was a man to see and consider. 

The universe is a storehouse of poten- 
tialities ; it is a great silent battery until 
man comes, touches the key and flashes the 
silent energy in forms of intelligence to a 
million souls. 

The first fact then is the fact of strug- 
gle ; the fact of co-operative activity, of 
wrestling with God in order that God may 
be revealed and understood. 

The next thought I want you to reflect 
upon is that it is man, it is your fellow-beings, 
who have achieved, and are still achiev- 
ing, the destiny of life through some form 
of struggle. It is the human, personal 
quality in all this infinite toil and task that 
I want you to think of. 

4 8 



There is a certain kind of struggle, of 
titanic effort, in the evolution of the universe 
itself, in what Paul called the groaning of 
creation waiting for the revealing of the 
sons of God. There is the sign of strug- 
gle in all this convulsive movement of 
nature from chaos to order, in all the throbs 
and age-long travailing before man ap- 
peared ; but after all the creation truly 
waits for the revealing of the sons of God. 
Creation, in the larger sense, begins with 
the advent of man, and the struggle that is 
significant, that is interpretative, that is re- 
vealing, is this long pathetic human strug- 
gle which has wrought out the spiritual 
achievements of mankind. 

Now it is just this human, personal ele- 
ment in the whole process that is so pre- 
cious, and that makes so powerful appeal to 
our sympathy and interest. We are not in 
a universe that is whirling along like some 
gigantic brainless engine upon the rails. 
The revelation of the personal heart of the 
universe is not interpreted in terms of the 
steam-gauge and the cyclometer. Person- 
ality is the key to life ; the heart of man 
4 49 



answereth to the heart of God. The 
strength of the Almighty comes down into 
the soul of the man who wrestles with him, 
though he bear the marks of the encoun- 
ter. 

Perhaps we are sometimes in danger of 
losing sight of this personal element in the 
universal struggle. We are accustomed to 
talk in impersonal terms about the evolu- 
tion of the universe, about the progress of 
thought and ideas. We get accustomed to 
the abstract view of it all, and thus we lose 
contact with the human significance of it ; 
forget how it has all been achieved through 
" the effort, the sorrow, the victory of hu- 
manity. " 

What really do we mean when we talk 
about the progress of science? There is 
no motor by the name of science that speeds 
along the pathway of life ringing its bell and 
blowing its whistle and running over heed- 
less men like some mighty juggernaut. But 
there are and there have been in almost 
every age lonely souls who above all things 
have loved the truth, have been devoted to 
it with undying fidelity, and have listened 
5° 



to the mute finger-speech of God through 
all the spaces of the world. 

There is no science that reveals truth, but 
there are men of science, men who have 
loved the fact and the reality. There are 
men like Copernicus and Galileo, like 
Newton and Darwin, who have wrestled 
through the long night until the breaking 
of the day while their fellow-mortals, slum- 
bering late, waking at last with heavy eyes, 
will not believe that they have wrestled with 
God and prevailed. They can not as yet 
see the new name written in their fore- 
heads, the sign that through their fidelity 
they have prevailed and achieved. 

We have to put all these results of human 
thinking and suffering into algebraic formu- 
las for convenient use, but we need often to 
return from the formula to the throbbing 
life of which it is but the sign. We need to 
feel how great have been the pain, and the 
cost, and the sore struggle of these our 
fellow-men who have lived before us. We 
need to realize how we are blessed by their 
pain, and how through their poverty we are 
made rich. It is this thought that binds 
51 



our humanity together and makes us real- 
ize that there is something sacramental, 
something redeeming in this pathetic strug- 
gle, in this generous and forgetting sacri- 
fice. 

Therefore we must not lose sight of the 
element of intense personalism in all the 
struggle and achievement of the ages ; we 
must not dissociate the ideas and the truths 
from the heroic souls through whose pain 
and sorrow we possess them. 

And when we have thought to the very 
bottom of all the reasons, and have made 
due account of the lingering of supersti- 
tions, is not this after all the reason why 
mankind will not readily let go its faith, 
its love and devotion for Christ? Is it not 
because he is the person of persons ; the 
one whose name is rightly above every 
name ; because he so gathered up into him- 
self the spiritual struggles and the spiritual 
achievement of mankind? Is it not because 
the legendary struggle of Jacob with the 
angel comes to its highest spiritual reality 
in the experience of Jesus in Gethsemane? 
When all the spurious interpretations of 
52 



the truth have passed away, will not men 
still discover an abiding meaning in the 
ancient prophecy that by his stripes we are 
healed and that through his suffering he 
led many sons to repentance? 

The hopeful aspect of the spiritual 
movement of man is in its return to the 
concrete personal element in life ; to a 
deeper appreciation of the fact that the 
greatest thing in life is not a blind imper- 
sonal progress of ideas and principles, but 
the earnest, devoted effort of brave human 
souls to see the truth and do the divine deed. 
It is men who are the saviors of men ; it is 
the sons of men who for each other take 
upon themselves the sorrows and the sins 
of the world, who at last bear the world 
out of sin and sorrow into the everlasting 
light of God's face. 

Here then are two facts, the struggle ; 
the human element in the struggle. There 
is yet a third fact. It is through this strug- 
gle that transformation of character comes 
about. Man wrestles with God and at last 
he learns, it may be only at the break of 



53 



day, it may be when he is bruised and 
lame, but at last he learns, not what he 
asked, the name of God, for he does not 
get at the ultimate mystery of life ; but he 
learns that his name is changed ; he is no 
longer Jacob ; he is Israel, one who has 
prevailed with God. Spiritual achievement, 
development and strength of character are 
born out of all this infinite labor and sorrow. 
This is the pitiful, the tragic, but the 
noble and heroic aspect of our human 
life. I never look into the beautiful, inno- 
cent face of a child without some feel- 
ing of dread concern. Is there any of us 
who can ? One wants to ward off all this 
inevitable combat ; and } r et who would dare 
do it? and how soon it comes ! The little 
mind begins to struggle with the problems 
of character and at school with the prob- 
lems of knowledge. It is a solitary and 
personal encounter. To do the problem 
for the child, to settle the simple question 
of duty or right, to him so disturbing, 
without leaving room for the personal en- 
counter, may seem the easy way, to the 
thoughtless and the sentimental the best 
54 



way, but for the achievement of character 
always the wrong way. The duty of mak- 
ing oneself useless to child and pupil is 
ever as urgent as that of making oneself 
useful to him. 

And then the years go by. Life unfolds 
into many forms of experience. The greater 
part of human experience is the universal, 
common experience of the race, and yet it 
must be wrought out each time anew in each 
human life. And who can tell another how 
to live? who can interpret for another this 
common experience of labor and sorrow, of 
pain and death ? What can any of us do ex- 
cept to look with hope and say to each 
other — all this conflict, all this mystery of 
life, all these Gethsemanes and Calvaries 
shall work for us a far more exceeding and 
eternal weight of glory ; they shall purify 
and ennoble you until you are able to wear 
the name Israel, the one who has so wres- 
tled with the divine meaning of life and 
penetrated so much of its secret that the 
name Prevailer with God is at last the name 
worthy to be borne ! 

We seem so dumb and helpless in the 
55 



presence of these common experiences of 
life which come laden with pain and sorrow ; 
we seem staggered afresh as one after 
another of our fellow-mortals comes for his 
baptism of fire ; yet, after all, is not the 
meaning hidden here in the law of spirit- 
ual achievement of which we have been 
thinking to-day? The fire that turns the 
iron into steel is the key to the iron's 
destiny : and if character is the final and 
worthy goal for man, then the struggle 
through which character is achieved and 
the great name is won is the key to human 
life. "To him that overcometh," runs the 
apocaryptic promise, " will I give to eat of 
the tree of life which is in the Paradise of 
God." 



56 



gfoje gjcrxrfc gtxat Gtatxttt Hart gs ©pjettjed 



IV 

THE BOOK THAT COULD NOT BE 
OPENED 

Isaiah xxix. 10-12. — For the Lord hath poured out 
upon you the spirit of deep sleep, and hath closed 
your eyes, the prophets ; and your heads, the seers, hath 
he covered. And all vision is become unto you as the 
words of a book that is sealed, which men deliver to 
one that is learned, saying, Read this I pray thee ; 
and he saith : I can not ; for it is sealed : and the 
book is delivered to him that is not learned, saying : 
Read this I pray thee ; and he saith, I am not 
learned. 

QpWO creative influences are at work in 
v!v9 ^ e WOI "ld> shaping and developing 
^^Tv it ; the power of knowledge and the 
power of will. Life in every form depends 
ultimately upon two things : the fact and 
the deed ; the idea and the realization of 
the idea. 

Conversely, there are two forms of weak- 
ness in the world, two things which hinder 
and thwart ; these two are ignorance and 
indifference. It is useless to ask which of 
57 



ghz |3ooK ghat ®o\iia got ge ®pmz& 

the two is better, knowledge or will ; which 
of the corresponding two is worse, igno- 
rance or indifference. Wherever there is 
zeal without knowledge, an irresponsible en- 
thusiasm rushing into life without regard to 
the wisdom of fact and experience, the only 
result is fanatical confusion. Wherever 
there is knowledge, the acquisition of facts 
and ideas without the transformation of 
them into life, the result is pedantry, dilet- 
tantism, scholastic pride. The point of 
deepest depression and degradation is man- 
ifestly reached where ignorance and indif- 
ference are combined ; correspondingly, the 
progress and development of all true and 
noble life are dependent ultimately upon 
the progress and development of both 
knowledge and will. 

This is, perhaps, a rendering in modern 
terms of the thought which was in the mind 
of the prophet Isaiah when he spoke to his 
contemporaries the words which I have 
read. Isaiah was one of the few men of his 
time who realized that the nation was fast 
drifting to political ruin. So far as the 
causes of peril were within the nation itself, 

58 



Six* Stfxrk glmt ®jOf»W §*t S* <$?***£ 

he tried to point them out and to have the 
people rectify them. But the current was 
too swift, too near the precipice and was 
bound to rush on. The prophet got the 
customary reward of the prophet from 
those who were too blind to see the danger 
and from those who were contented, well- 
to-do, indolent and easy-going. They 
wagged their heads in derision and mock- 
ingly said : "Who is this that teaches us 
line upon line, precept upon precept, as if 
we were children?" 

Then the prophet's answer was flung back 
in a spirit of denunciation and of bitter dis- 
appointment, as the tremendous incubus of 
the ignorance and indifference of his con- 
temporaries weighed upon him. " God 
hath poured out upon you the spirit of a 
deep sleep, and He hath shut your eyes 
the prophets, and He hath covered your 
heads the seers, and the vision of life which 
they see and tell is like a sealed book to 
you. Some of you can not interpret it be- 
cause you can not read, and some of you 
can not interpret it because the book is 
sealed and you have not interest and incli- 
59 



glue g00k gjmt WoxxXti %lot ge ®pznz& 

nation enough to break the seals. You say 
I can not read it, for I am not learned ; I 
can not read it, for it is sealed." 

Now, there is a remarkable modernness 
about all this. There is a modernness about 
it because there is a universality about it. 
What Isaiah said of his own time, a man 
like him in spirit would say of every time. 
For we must remember that a prophet of 
the first rank is never a cynic nor a satir- 
ist of his time. He is a seer, an idealist, 
and he measures the duty and opportunity 
of every age by a standard which exists in 
his own mind and conscience. He is the 
architect who insists that these earthly 
houses made with hands shall be modeled 
after the house not made with hands, shaped 
after the pattern shown him in the mount. 

So, I say, any man looking out on life 
and society with the eyes of Isaiah would 
feel as he did. He would feel that how- 
ever much mankind had progressed it was 
still recreant to existing opportunities and 
possible advances ; that it was still and con- 
stantly guilty of " the sin of the ungirt loin 
and the unlit lamp." And as he looked out 
60 



Slxje S*xrk gfeat ®<mlti gtoi S* ©pjetxjexi 

on life and saw men struggling with their 
opportunities and their destinies ; saw them 
trying to open the great book of life, or in- 
dolently leaving it unopened and unread, 
he would feel again how fit were these words 
spoken so long ago — "The vision of all is 
like a book that is sealed ; some can not 
read it because they are not learned ; some 
will not read it because they lack the en- 
ergy to break the seals." 

But it needs not the insight of Isaiah to 
see that the trouble lying deep at the heart 
of our own time is a trouble of both the in- 
tellect and the will; the lack of knowledge 
and the lack of inclination, the absence of 
opportunity and the refusal to heed opportu- 
nity. 

Sometimes we are inclined to lay the en- 
tire blame at the door of one or the other of 
these conditions. Plato identified evil with 
ignorance, and he taught that the way to 
make men better was to make them wiser ; 
that virtue was a necessary consequence of 
knowledge. In that masterly dialogue, the 
Protagoras, Socrates, who is the spokes- 
man, proceeds in his usual relentless dia- 
61 



gftje morjcrk ghat ®o\xW gxrt 3te ©jmxetf 

lectic to show, one after the other, that the 
virtues are the result of knowledge and the 
vices of ignorance. If Plato had used the 
figure of Isaiah, and been true to the logic 
of the Socratic doctrine, he must have said 
that the only reason why men could not 
read the book of life was because they were 
not learned ; because somewhere they had* 
missed the knowledge of that fact or truth 
which would have opened the door to its 
corresponding virtue. 

This has been one method of interpreting 
the recreancy of human life to its highest 
opportunities. The other way, the way 
more familiar to those who have been 
brought up under the influence of the Chris- 
tian church, is to charge the whole matter 
to the perverted and sinful heart of man, to 
his will estranged from the divine will ; 
consequently the conviction which has been 
more deeply ingrained than almost any 
other is that the heart and the will of man 
must be changed ; that the essential attitude 
of his own inner nature must be reversed 
before the forces of good can be set at work. 
The whole trouble is that man stands before 
62 



gits Sxrxrli glxat QtmW Hut He ^pstuetf 

the book of life and can not read it aright 
because he can not open it ; and he can not 
open it because it is irrevocably sealed to 
his impotent and indolent will. 

But as we look out widely upon the field 
of life, as we begin to see the magnitude 
and the meaning of this great book of life, 
it becomes more and more apparent that 
neither the teaching of Plato nor that of 
the Church has been wholly right, and for 
the reason that each has taught but half the 
truth ; and the half which each taught has 
needed the other half to correct and com- 
plete it. 

If any earnest person takes a look out 
upon the field of human society as it is or- 
ganized to-day, begins to think about that 
fraction of it which is around him, in which 
he lives ; especially the parts of it which 
seem most in need of improvement and of 
help, to what conclusion is he likely to 
arrive? Will he say that the reason for the 
disorder, disease and crime that he sees 
around him is found in the inherent evil of 
human nature ; that men love evil rather 
than goodness and darkness rather than 

63 



glxc gcrtfk gfcat ®em\a &ot gc ®psma 

the light? Will he look for the explanation 
of poverty-stricken homes and the besotted 
condition of their inmates in some inherent 
impulse toward vice? Will he declare that 
the only reason why men are not happy 
and prosperous and contented is because 
they want to be bad? 

And will he conclude from all this that it 
is utterly useless to try to change the out- 
ward conditions of men until you have- 
changed their hearts ; that not environment 
but the soul and the conscience is the place 
of attack? 

This is precisely what men have said a 
thousand times and what a great many who 
are certainly earnest and zealous enough 
believe still with all their hearts. But 
when any one follows out this path of con- 
viction he does not travel very far before 
he is confronted by certain evident facts. 
He finds in the first place that, with regard 
to countless ills, when ignorance is dis- 
placed by knowledge, the evil disappears. 
We turn back to the Bible and we find 
there the belief shared generally by the 
people that disease was a direct evidence 

6 4 






gftje gxrjoli gftat ®bu1& Hat %z toptntfiL 

of sin and a direct punishment for it. 
"What hath this man done that he was 
born blind?" — said the people on one occa- 
sion. 

Disease is often enough the result of 
some broken law of life, but we are daily 
learning how much of law is broken through 
ignorance. The mere access of light, the 
spread of knowledge, the discovery of 
disease-producing conditions hidden away 
out of the sight of man, result in the ban- 
ishment, or imprisonment, forever of one 
form of disease after another. Day by day 
the territory presided over by disease is be- 
coming annexed to the dominion of the queen 
of health. The men of science are explor- 
ing in this great field of life. Diseases which 
but a few years ago were almost beyond 
the control of the physicians are now so 
much within their mastery that they laugh 
them to scorn as they watch their puny 
struggles within hands which have become 
mighty through the advent of knowledge. 

There is no reason why we should not 
ultimately hope for the entire control and 
banishment of disease, and for the elevation 
5 65 



Sfte l^jcrfc gfoat Would Hut %z ®pzxu& 

of the doctors to the guardianship of the 
prophylactics of life instead of its path- 
ology. 

So here is one domain of life, where 
evil is the result of ignorance more than 
of a bad heart. There is no longer 
any use in saying that the bacteria with 
which every drop of water swarms, and 
the germs which are borne to a whole 
continent from Russian steppes or the far 
away Indies, are the result of human sin, 
of the depraved heart of man. To take 
that attitude merely serves to bring confus- 
ion into all our moral reckonings. It would 
be as sane to take stand with the old as- 
trologists and charge it all to the ma- 
lign influence of the planets. It is simply 
one of the aspects of life where men have 
stood helplessly before the book of life and 
have been unable to read it because they 
have not been learned. The lack has been 
a lack of knowledge rather than a lack of 
will. 

Now, as we follow along this path, we 
meet another fact which calls a halt. We 
have been accustomed to hear men say that 
66 



glue gjcrjcrk gtmt ^onXd QtA g* (ftpjetued 

bad outward conditions are the direct re- 
sult of bad inward states. We have been 
told repeatedly that drunkenness and kin- 
dred vices are the greatest causes of poverty 
in the world. That is certainly a truth, 
but it is a truth which lies so near the path 
of our travel that the wayfaring man, 
though a fool, can not help seeing it. But the 
truth that is not quite so evident and does 
not lie so near the surface, nor get so 
frequent iteration, is that poverty is also 
a cause of drunkenness and all the other 
social vices ; that bad social surroundings 
have as decided an influence in making 
men bad, as bad men have in making their 
surroundings bad. The whole question of 
social environment is demanding our atten- 
tion anew. 

A human character is a very complex 
thing. There are at least three forces at 
work within each of us at any time. There 
is, first, our inherited self, that which we 
are in body and spirit as a product of the 
race life out of which we emerge. Then 
there is the environment, that marvelous 
field of influences and institutions into 

6 7 



gftje §K0xrfc gftat ®#nXd H** 3* <&?**££ 

which we come, upon which as a stage 
we enact our parts. The forms of govern- 
ment, religion, social life, in which we 
live ; laws, customs, habits and prejudices ; 
geographical and climatic conditions ; dif- 
ferences of city and country life, — these 
and a thousand other things constitute the 
second of the three forces. Then last of all 
there is the will of each individual reacting 
upon these other forces and recombining 
them into that result which makes up the 
character of the individual. 

Now, the force of inheritance, so far as it 
is a past thing, so far as it lies behind us, 
does not come within our present consider- 
ation. But the environment, that complex 
of influences which constitutes our social 
surrounding, is distinctly that thing which 
is determined largely by the intelligence or 
the ignorance of mankind. If a man's 
drunkenness causes his poverty we must 
change the man ; but if his poverty causes 
his habit of drunkenness, and if that pov- 
erty inheres in any degree in a maladjust- 
ment of social conditions, if there is an in- 
cubus upon a man outside of his own will, 
68 



gftje gjoocrli glxai Would ^jcrt gje <®pjetxjetf 

£##/ belongs unmistakably within the sphere 
of things which a right reason will find a 
way to alter, just as already advancing 
knowledge has banished so many forms of 
disease. 

And this is just the truth which is dawn- 
ing upon many thoughtful people at last; 
the book of life is to many a closed book, 
not because men are bad nor because 
their wills are at fault, but because under 
existing conditions they can not read ; they 
are not learned. The fault is not in that 
indifference of will which alone the will can 
change, but in the external state which 
light, wisdom and experience have changed 
a thousand times and will change again. 

Therefore, the great necessity laid upon 
us all is to sit down with teachable spirits 
and learn. The time for experiments, *for 
tinkering and quackery, has gone by. We 
need the light of that wisdom which the his- 
tory of human and social development can 
give us before we can know what are the 
wise steps to take. We must learn to read 
before we can open the book and under- 
stand what is written. 

6 9 



gfae ^*x>k ghat ©xruXa ^0t gjc ®imtje<l 

One could speak at almost any length of 
the applications of this thought. Let us 
note briefly one or two, that the meaning 
may be clearer. 

There is the ever-recurring question, — 
"How shall we deal with the problem of 
intemperance? What are we going to do 
with the saloon?" Now, nobody can tell 
us just what we are going to do or just what 
it is best to do. But the thing to note, as 
an illustration of the present thought, is 
this : that whenever we try to deal with a 
great problem like this, regardless of the 
social forces underlying its development, 
we deal with it from the standpoint of the 
empiric and not from the standpoint of 
knowledge. For whoever ignores that pal- 
pable condition in human society, that 
habit which has become ingrained in the 
fiber of our Anglo-Saxon race through cen- 
turies of growth, the habit which has been 
fitly called the "tavern instinct," is work- 
ing just as aimlessly as did the heroes be- 
fore Hercules' time who tried to extermi- 
nate the hydra. The tavern and its 
successor, the saloon, is to many men 
70 



glue S?jcrxrk gtet ®onX& §:xrt fS5je ®:poetxjed 

the focus of their social life. It is a bad 
social center, let us admit, and most of all 
because it ignores the home and deprives 
man of the society of woman and of chil- 
dren. But right or wrong, it is a fact, it is 
a social condition, and one which can be 
permanently changed only by that wisdom 
which comes from knowledge of the cir- 
cumstances which make the institution what 
it is. 

Therefore it is full time to say to the em- 
pirics and to all, however zealous and earn- 
est, if the zeal is not guided by knowledge : 
" hands off, for a little, until we can really 
learn how to read this puzzling chapter in 
our book of life. " 

There is another order of relations which 
affords a striking illustration of our thought. 
When one looks out upon the social strug- 
gle that is everywhere going on, and 
watches the ceaseless effort of the masses 
of the people to better their condition, he 
discovers on one side a class that is bitter 
in its antagonism to every existing institu- 
tion, whatever it is ; a class whose watch- 
word is destruction. " Tear down that we 
7i 



glue gusli gftai Qoulti Hut %z ®yznz& 

may build anew," is the battle cry. And 
over against these are others who ridicule 
every effort of men to emancipate them- 
selves and to bring about any change. 
There are men who regard the economic 
rules under which industry is now con- 
ducted as essentially permanent and eter- 
nal and who regard any effort to revise 
them as flying in the face of nature. 

Now the appeal needs to be made from 
both these classes to a more intelligent 
reading of the book of life. Let us find 
the truth, and the truth will have power to 
make us free. Let us from a profounder 
knowledge of history learn how mankind 
has developed in the past, in what way it 
has transcended imperfect conditions, has 
found place for larger ideals, more humane 
relations, and out of that knowledge let us 
walk on confidently into the future. 

But we must now leave this side of the 
subject and look for a moment at the other. 
For life consists of two things, — the fact 
and the deed ; the idea and the realization 
of the idea. 

72 



gJxe giKrk gfeai (&&\x\& §tot gje ®pjettjetf 

For those who can not interpret the book 
of life because they can not read, knowl- 
edge is the necessity, knowledge growing 
" from more to more." But for those who 
stand helplessly and indifferently by and 
say, — ' ' I can not read it, for it is sealed," — 
the appeal is to the will, to the capacity for 
action. 

The fact must lead to the deed ; but in 
its turn, also, the doing of the deed is what 
brings with it the revelation of the fact and 
the truth. Therefore, knowledge and ac- 
tion are, by right and by divine intention, 
inseparable companions. 

When we try to understand the motives 
and forces that guide the people among 
whom we live, we perceive at length two 
reasons for the indifference and inactiv- 
ity of men. The very greatness of the 
power for knowledge, sometimes dwarfs 
and paralyzes the power of action. Men 
become absorbed in speculation and satis- 
fied with the curiosity of learning. " They 
think and wonder, and muse and reflect, 
but lose the faculty of achieving in the 
characterless maze of mere thought and 
73 



S&s gojok glxat OToxild got %z ®pmzd 

perception." It is precisely that attitude 
which the keen eye of Shakespeare saw : 

" The native hue of resolution 
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, 
And enterprises of great pith and moment 
With this regard their currents turn awry 
And lose the name of action." 

It is an easy thing to beguile and de- 
ceive ourselves ; to imagine that we have 
achieved the virtuous and courageous deed 
because we have cherished the virtuous 
thought ; it is easy to be valiant in our 
dreams ; we slay our thousands and our 
tens of thousands when we muse before the 
fire ; it is not difficult to have the emotions 
and impulses of honorable action as we listen 
to its presentation in poem, or drama, or 
sermon. But the true test is to come on the 
morrow when we are deprived of the sus- 
taining emotion of the moment and have to 
fall back on the conviction which lies deep in 
the heart ; shall we be brave and honorable, 
and devoted and self-sacrificing then ? or 
will the clasps of the book seem so heavy 
that we turn away with the sad reflection 
74 



glx* gxroK gftat ®onlti got ;§* ®pmz& 

that we can not open the book because it is 
sealed ? 

This is the most seductive cause of indif- 
ference and inactivity : the substitution of 
virtue of thought for virtue of deed ; the 
exchange of ruddy resolution for the pale 
cast of thought. 

But deeper than all this, and sadder than 
all, is the indifference which grows out of 
the general aimlessness of life ; the re- 
fusal on our part to commit it to the best 
and the noblest that we know ; it is the 
sin ' ' of the ungirt loin and the unlit lamp." 
Knowledge and the light of truth we need 
and shall forever need. In some ways we 
need it before the path to action can become 
clear. But the most of us have already 
knowledge that outruns our action. We 
have annexed to our dominions vast terri- 
tories of truth in which we have not cut a 
single path or planted a single seed. 

Knowledge and truth are the elements 
by means of which life progresses, but it is 
the will of man consecrated to truth which 
realizes truth and builds it into houses more 
and more like the house not made with 
75 



gftje gjooofc ghat (£#uia §:*t ■§* ^jxetued 

hands. Truth is like the hundred-eyed 
Argus of the Greek mythology ; but Argus 
is helpless, unless the hundred-handed 
Briareus lends him aid, just as poor blind 
Briareus is helpless unless the seeing Argus 
leads him on. You must have the truth if 
you are to be free. But you must will to 
do the truth and be led by it, if its hand shall 
ever clasp yours and lead you on " o'er 
crag and torrent till the night is gone." 

The last word to-day then is simply 
this, — Consecrate yourself to all the truth 
that is clear to your eyes to-day. If you 
know anything or possess anything of 
value, find some way to dedicate it to the 
general good. Have you riches? You are 
only their steward ; they are yours for the 
purpose of making the general life more 
beautiful and rich, for in the last resort all 
private riches come out of the pain and toil 
of the general life. Have you knowledge? 
You are only the channel of it ; let it flow 
on ; do not dare to dam up the waters. 

The only reason why we can discover 
and possess any truth is because the divine 
life which pervades all things is flashing it 

7 6 



ghz IP**!*, gfeat ®&ul& Ujodt %z ®pznz& 

forth in countless ways ; the only reason 
why we can do any deed is because the 
eternal will is constantly energizing and 
acting. And the chief reason why the 
gleams of eternal light have not earlier 
flashed out into full day and the energiz- 
ings of the eternal will transformed life 
everywhere is because we also have wills 
and have power to hinder and to thwart. 
Our wills are ours, but it takes so long to 
learn that they are ours to make them His. 

I leave with you then these three inquir- 
ies : 

Do we believe that our humanity has in 
it the capacity for improvement, for nobler 
and better life? 

Have we as individuals, or have we in 
our collective life as churches, any gift, 
any power, any opportunity to help forward 
faster and more efficiently than now the 
growth and progress of human life? 

Finally, shall we will to do it? 

To the man, the church, the community 
that can say " Yes " to these questions, the 
book of life can not long remain bound and 
fastened with perplexing seals. 
77 



cilnve.ga tried ^vopJxtts 



UNREGARDED PROPHETS 

Mark vi. 4. — And Jesus said unto them, A prophet is 
not without honor save in his own country, and among 
his own kin, and in his own house. 

{^ft O^ITH this proverb Jesus rebuked 
y^(/\Jl the skepticism of the village 
(5^^lcJ folk, the neighbors whom he 
had known all his life. It is a very 
natural scene in that little village syna- 
gogue at Nazareth ; it is characteristic- 
ally true to human nature. This young 
man, who had grown up among them, who, 
with his brothers and sisters, had played in 
the village street as a child, whom they had 
known as the son of Mary and Joseph the 
carpenter, and afterward as a carpenter 
himself, had come to that point in his life 
where he felt the throbbing of a great and 
holy purpose in his heart ; he had conse- 
crated himself with full vigor to the new 
resolve formed there in the wilderness 
where his kinsman John was heralding the 

78 



kingdom of God. He came up from the 
consecrating vow, as many another has 
come, with a new light upon his face, as il 
the heavens had opened and God had audi- 
bly uttered an approving word. Then from 
this moment of highest beatitude he had 
been hurried away into the desert to strug- 
gle with the meaning of this new resolve, 
to conquer the temptation of power, to sub- 
due himself to his mission ; and then one 
day finds him back again in the familiar 
town among the hills where he had always 
lived, whose every cottage and lane and 
tree were familiar to him, and on one day 
in the synagogue, at that point in the serv- 
ice where it was not unusual for others than 
the appointed officers to speak, this young 
man opens his lips and the people bore him 
witness that he spoke with grace and pow- 
er. A new radiance was on his face, a new 
convincingness was in his words ; it all 
seemed to them for one unguarded moment 
as if all this were in truth a message straight 
from the heart of God. 

Then it was that this characteristic work- 
ing of human nature made itself felt. " What 

79 



means it all?" they asked with questioning 
faces. "Is he not our own fellow-villager? 
Is he not Mary and Joseph's son? Is he 
not the young carpenter, the one who but a 
few weeks ago thatched my roof and made 
the new mast, Simon, for your fishing boat? 
And here are his sisters and brothers, these 
ordinary common folk ; it must be we are 
mistaken ; our ears are deceived ; he has 
not said what we have seemed to hear fall- 
ing from his lips." 

Then Jesus met their bewilderment with 
a proverb : "A prophet is not without honor 
save in his own country and among his own 
kin and in his own house." The proverb 
simply formulates the law and habit of our 
natures to depreciate that which we seem 
to know. That which is common tends to 
become commonplace ; the familiar scenes 
and objects breed in us indifference if not 
contempt. 

To begin with the less important, we may 
recognize this fact, or at any rate the exact 
analogue of it, in our relation with the 
natural world. Somehow the senses get 
blunted to the beauty of the objects which 
80 



we see around us every day ; we lose the 
power to wonder and appreciate. Were 
there but one daisy in the field we would 
give a handsome sum to go and see it ; we 
would look with the scrutiny of admiring 
interest, and would fix its form in our 
hearts. But because the fields are full of 
daisies and clover, and the waysides afflu- 
ent with floral forms, we forget that they 
are beautiful ; we discount their value at 
once under the contemptuous name of weed, 
and when perchance some one arises who 
has power " to read the secret of the weed's 
plain heart" we are too often like the vil- 
lage folk of Nazareth ; we can not believe 
just for the reason that we have known this 
common flower all our lives. "Is it not a 
weed?" we say in precisely the same tone 
of voice, with the same accent of bewil- 
dered incredulity with which those people 
asked one another, "Is not this the carpen- 
ter?" 

Thus it is that the common becomes the 
commonplace ; we fail 

" To take it at God's value, and pass by 
The offere^i wealth with unrewarded eye." 

6 81 



T&utectardjcd prophets 

Happy are we if, before it is too late, we 
come under the influence of the poets and 
the lovers of nature whose observant eyes 
and responsive hearts bring us back to see 
the glory that was passing before our very 
door ; happv are we if these dear silent 
prophets of God's faithfulness and love do 
not remain forever to us as prophets with- 
out honor in their own country and among 
their own people. Most blessed of all are 
we if sometime we learn that 

" The meanest flower that blows can give 
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." 

But. again, we find this law and habit of 
human nature working itself out in the ten- 
dency to depreciate the present as com- 
pared with the past or the future. 

There are some who always put the 
Golden Age in the remote past : there are 
many more who put it safely forward into 
the remote future ; but it requires more 
hope, more faith, more devotion to put it 
here in the present, to find its material in 
the molten ideas and passions and possi- 
bilities of our own contemporarv life. Jesus 
82 



said, — Say not of the Kingdom of God, 
" Lo here !" as if one might find it in the 
past, or " Lo there !" as if one must look 
for it in the future, but say rather "the 
Kingdom of God is among you;" and Car- 
lyle in his own rugged way echoed that 
doctrine of Jesus, when he said: — "Here 
or nowhere is thy ideal ; work it out there- 
from." 

Now from the great events, the heroic 
characters, the decisive moments, the 
critical turning points in the past history of 
mankind, we are perpetually to derive in- 
spiration and courage. The battle of Ther- 
mopylae will forever stand as witness, not 
only of indomitable courage and devotion, 
but of a decisive event in the shaping of 
human history ; we can not too often tell 
the story of such events to our children. 
We can not keep too fragrant the memory 
of those who have served their day and 
their fellow-men ; the shining roll should be 
ever visible to our eyes and its names signifi- 
cant to our hearts, but we should never 
turn to them without the warning that over 
and over again " the worshipers of light 

83 



ancestral have made present light a crime." 
If the past is sacred because it is the past, 
if it commands our reverence only because 
we can see no glory in human deeds until 
the halo of time has crowned them, then 
do we need the warning. 

What is it in our natures that enables us 
to admit with an almost credulous unhesi- 
tancy the hand of God shaping such events 
as the discovery of America, the religious 
revolution under Luther, the sailing of the 
Mayflower, but keeps us blind to the provi- 
dential shaping of events which are issuing 
out of our own time and life? 

I remember how deeply I used to be im- 
pressed with the once familiar argument 
for the divine origin of Christianity, that it 
came into a world which was providentially 
prepared for it. Hebrew in its origin, it 
came into touch with the Roman empire 
when that empire was at the fullness of its 
glory and could give the new religion an 
extensive spread, such as it could not have 
had at any other moment ; and its scriptures 
laid hold upon the Greek language and 



8 4 



made themselves eternal in that eloquent 
medium of the human spirit. 

I still believe there is great force in this 
argument, but it is often made more than 
false through the limitation of it, through 
the implication of a special and temporary 
preparation of the world for the march of 
divine ideas ; and so in order to make some 
one object in life sacred and worth rever- 
ing, we doom the rest to a more hopeless 
confusion than ever. 

We should not forget that time corrects 
the aberrations of judgment ; that it sifts out 
the little things from the great event and 
the noble person, enables us to see their 
relative value just as in the distance we ap- 
preciate and measure more justly the rela- 
tion of the great mountains to the little hills. 
It is not always possible for even the wisest 
to see so clearly the meaning of the current 
life that they are able to tell us what the 
Eternal Wisdom is saying to us at this mo- 
ment. 

But we may at least be aware that one pur- 
pose runs through all time and all life ; that 
sacredness is not an attribute of the past and 
85 



secularity of the present. It is possible for us 
all to live with a deeper sense of the signifi- 
cance to ultimate history of the events over 
which we ourselves have some shaping in- 
fluence ; of the life which gets impulse and 
momentum from the wills and desires em- 
bodied in ourselves. This much we may 
know, and this surely is enough to lift every 
moment of life out of the commonplace and 
the trivial, and to help us realize with some 
solemnity that when the jargon of voices is 
stilled and the hurried estimates of cur- 
rent events are all in, there is One who 
will pass judgment upon it all — w r ho, with 
his winnowing fan, will silt out the chafF 
from the w r heat. 

When even for once one has felt the sig- 
nificance of history, I can not imagine him 
believing that God cares nothing for the 
movement of life contemporaneous with 
ourselves, nor can I imagine him determin- 
ing his own relation to these events with- 
out some regard to the ultimate verdict 
upon them by that One who "standeth 
behind the shadow keeping watch above 
his own." 

86 



We come then to the final thought, a 
thought which comes more nearly within 
the sphere of our lives in their interior and 
most personal relations, for it dawns upon 
us sometimes with consternation that we 
fail to perceive the greatness and the 
sacredness of the life that is stirring within 
these near and familiar relations, within the 
circle of these interests that hold us to- 
gether. 

What are the qualities which we revere 
in those who lived long enough ago to have 
won our reverence? Are they not bravery, 
fortitude and courage? Are they not ten- 
derness, patience and devotion? Are they 
not self-forgetting sacrifice and love? What 
are the attributes that we connect with 
God? Are they not these same qualities 
refined and intensified and raised to the in- 
finite degree? 

We can not forget that the stuff of which 
our human life is made is a mixing of two 
apparently incongruous elements. The es- 
sential truth still abides in the old creation 
story, that God made man of the clay of 
the earth and breathed into him his spirit 

8 7 



'WLnvtQKX&zfiL 'gxopUzts 

so that he became a living soul, and man 
has fought out his destiny and developed 
his life- story through the warfare of the 
twofold components of his nature, the clay 
in him fighting the God in him, the God in 
him anon asserting the ascendency over 
the clay in him. The story of the strifes 
and passions, the long catalogue of sins, 
the lusts and cruel hates, the murders and 
brutal wars, the hand of man lifted up 
against his brother — with all this we are 
only too familiar, and we stand aghast as 
we see the clay element asserting itself in us ; 
the law within our members, as Paul put 
it, that when we would do good evil is pres- 
ent with us, so that the thing we would do 
we do not, and the thing we would not do 
that we do. We feel our hearts sink with- 
in us as we see the fierce old passions forc- 
ing their resistless way down the channels 
of inheritance and asserting their suprema- 
cy almost in the cradle. 

But there is the compensating side, and to 
this side we never turn often enough. If 
the clay is still fighting the God in us, the 
God is still asserting itself over the clay. 



I know not where we are to look for the 
presence of divinity in such convincing 
degree as in the very human hearts which 
throb to-day with intense and eager life. 
Where are we to look for the exhibition of 
the traits that have upon them the stamp 
of God's very nature, if not in these lives to 
whom we are bound by the daily compan- 
ionships of life ? Are the channels of pity, of 
sympathy, of tender fellowship for each 
other's sorrows and sufferings dried up ? 
Do these streams that come from the pres- 
ence of God languish? Can we ask that 
question and not straightway get the an- 
swer back, out of our grateful memories or 
our present experience of the great tides of 
human pity and love pouring in upon us in 
the hours of our solicitude and our sore 
need ? Suffering, and pain, and peril, — 
how they open for us the springs of com- 
passionate human interest, and our hearts 
instinctively confess, — "God is in this place 
and I knew it not." 

Nor need we go to history for exam- 
ples of bravery, of fortitude, of courage. 
Leonidas and Winkelried, and the Light 



Brigade will ever inspire us and be to us the 
symbols of a quality which is the posses- 
sion of our common humanity ; but oh ! 
that our eyes might be opened so that we 
should see these qualities in action in the 
lives that belong not to history, that have 
not yet won the peace of the grave, but 
are in the flesh and moving through all the 
perplexities of this present life ! Does his- 
tory describe fortitude greater than you 
have sometimes witnessed in the lives 
around you ; patience that is sweeter or 
more touching than you have seen in lives 
about you in your own households or among 
your friends, patience growing strong out 
of the soil of sickness and suffering, of 
adversity and loss ? Say what we will of the 
supreme value and beauty of self-sacrifice, 
of devotion and love to the point of aban- 
donment of self-interest, glorify it as we do 
in every modern statement of the supreme 
ethical principle, — will you not find it nest- 
ling in the sanctities of every true home ? 
Will you not find its perpetual revelation in 
almost every mother's heart? 



90 



The pity of it is that we should live unre- 
gardful of these divine and holy qualities 
which give worth and sweetness to our daily 
life ; that any of these relations should be- 
come so familiar to us, so much taken for 
granted, that we become blind to the glory 
that suffuses them. We are living contin- 
ually on holy ground, yet we forget to take 
the shoes from off our feet ; we are dwelling 
every day in very sight and touch of di- 
vinity yet we do not fall down and pray. 
These our brothers, our friends, our hus- 
bands and wives, our little children, are 
revealing to us some ray of that light which 
lighteth every one that cometh into the 
world, are bringing to us some fresh per- 
suasion that it is God's world in which we 
live, and because they are of our own time 
and kin and country, we count them no 
prophets and fail to do them honor and 
reverence. 

So I come to-day to you with this mes- 
sage, ending as it does in this one plea, 
that we shall more and more try to discover 
these holy attributes in the lives that are 
near us, in the relations that tie us to the 
9 1 



present, so that out of our perception shall 
come new ennobling and transfiguring of 
all our life. 



92 



VI 
THE SUMMUM-BONUM 

Matt. xiii. 45, 46. — The kingdom of heaven is like 
unto a man that is a merchant seeking goodly pearls: 
and having found one pearl of great price he went and 
sold all that he had and bought it. 

OpHERE was a romantic belief about 
yiQ the pearl among the oriental people 

cv which must have made a parable 
based upon it doubly attractive to them. 
They believed that the pearl was formed by 
the dew of heaven entering into the shell 
wherein it was found, the quality and form 
of the pearl depending on the purity of the 
dew, the state of the atmosphere and even 
the hour of the day when the dew entered 
the shell. 

This romantic explanation has yielded 
to the more prosaic account of the forma- 
tion of the pearl which we derive from 
modern science, but we may still cher- 
ish its beautiful suggestion, as a means 
at least of understanding why the pearl 
93 



was so precious to the ancients. It was to 
them what the diamond is to moderns, the 
precious stone -par excellence; if of con- 
siderable size and rare purity of color, its 
value was exceedingly great. The two 
famous pearls of Cleopatra, one of which 
she is said to have dissolved in her wine 
cup and to have drunk in honor of her 
lover, were reputed to have a value of 
nearly a million dollars. 

Now Jesus, in casting about for something 
with which to compare the ideal of his 
heart, the mission of his life, that which he 
so often called the kingdom of heaven, com- 
pared it once among other things to a 
" goodly pearl," one that was fair and pure 
and perfect and of wondrous size, a pearl 
to be so coveted that the pearl-merchant, 
always on the lookout for such a prize, sold 
all the other pearls he had collected, got 
together all his available goods, bought 
the pearl and counted himself rich in its 
possession. 

Now, I ask you to consider this : the 
value of the goodly pearl was not exclu- 
sive, it was inclusive. The value of all the 
94 



gto Mnmmnm+'Sonnm 

lesser pearls and all the possessions which 
the merchant had before were included in 
the value of this fairest pearl of all. The 
other values were not lost and scattered ; 
they were merged and concentrated in this 
one pearl of great price. It was the (i sum- 
mum bonum" the supreme good, reached 
not by the sacrifice of other goods, but by 
the inclusion of them all in one. 

Herein, then, is the single thought for to- 
day, old and familiar enough to be sure, 
but still deserving, it may be, a word of 
fresh emphasis and interpretation. 

We do not always realize that the ac- 
quisition of all real values is of this inclu- 
sive character. We have become so ac- 
customed to measuring value in money and 
to regarding ourselves possessors of riches 
only as we possess this token of riches, 
that we are in danger of forgetting the 
destination and purpose of wealth. If 
we have ten dollars in our pocket-book 
we feel satisfied ; that is, we have ten dol- 
lars' worth of satisfaction ; the ownership 
and possession of the symbol create the 
feeling. But when we spend the ten dol- 
95 



Six* Sttmnxiim^jtttum 

lars for food, or clothing, or books, or 
pictures, or the education of our children, or 
our church subscription, — we are apt to say 
somewhat regretfully, — " There, that ten 
dollar-piece is gone !" Yes ! true enough, it 
is gone. But if it is wisely spent, then the 
value of it remains ; it is included in what 
we bought with it ; it abides with us in well- 
nourished bodies, in cultivated minds, in 
refined and ennobled feeling and imagina- 
tion, in inspirations cheering us on to still 
nobler life. Wealth is not wealth, or wel- 
fare, until it presses on to some final use 
which includes within itself adequate satis- 
faction to the life of man. 

The last chapter in every treatise on po- 
litical economy is the chapter on the con- 
sumption of wealth, and it is a subject 
which even to the present has received in- 
adequate treatment at the hands of the 
economists. They have been so fully ab- 
sorbed in the theories of production, of dis- 
tribution and exchange, that they have 
done scant justice to that for which all the 
other processes are but introductory steps ; 
for the only rational conception of wealth 



is that which connects it with welfare, and 
welfare is determined by the ultimate forms 
of consumption to which all wealth is des- 
tined. 

I have alwa}^s had kindly feelings toward 
Mohammed for one saying of his. He is 
reputed to have said on one occasion, in 
one of his most inspired and lucid moments, 
" If I had two loaves of bread I would sell 
one of them and buy hyacinths to feed my 
soul." 

Now, a mendicant friar of the middle ages 
might have said, ''That is not good doc- 
trine ; give away both loaves of bread ; live 
a life of piety and meditation, and depend 
upon others for your bread." 

There is also a type of humanitarianism 
in modern times which would say, "We 
must not talk about hyacinths so long as the 
world needs the primary things so much, 
the bare necessities of life. We must take 
the extra loaf and give it to the poor.'* 

I do not pretend to say that Mohammed's 

maxim expresses a final philosophy of life, 

or touches the heights of things, but only 

that so far as it goes it is in accord with the 

7 97 



glue Mnrnmnm^Bunm 

thought expressed in the parable of the 
goodly pearl. It is the exchange of one 
good thing for a relatively better thing. 
Mohammed felt that the hyacinths might 
be a goodlier pearl than the second loaf. 

So, when you take the ten dollars which 
represent your toil and service, the out- 
putting of energy, the giving of life, and 
put them into books which enshrine the 
thoughts of great men, or pictures which 
make ever present before you the vision of 
some great imagination, or into anything 
whatsoever which beautifies, ennobles and 
tranquilizes life, you should not say " there 
goes my hard-earned money," but rather 
you should say, " I have that bit of wealth 
secure ; for the first time I have it really 
turned into abiding wealth." 

To press the thought still closer to the 
parable, if you have had to calculate and 
choose and set aside things of lesser value 
in order that you may have the thing that 
is most worth the while, the thing which is 
going to be an abiding joy, a source of cul- 
ture and inspiration to your children, a per- 
manent benefit to the community in which 

9 8 



you live, then it is still more like selling the 
lesser pearls to buy the one of great price. 

You go into some houses and come away 
with the feeling that you have escaped from 
an upholstery store with the wares scat- 
tered in profusion on every side, and the 
smothered conviction that it is the mere 
accident of civilization which prevented the 
hostess from greeting you with gaudy feath- 
ers stuck in her hair and the primary colors 
arranged in due order upon her face. And 
that sort of barbaric vulgarity is contagious ; 
imitation is the strongest instinct we have. 
It is sure to react upon some of the neigh- 
bors who pine in discontent until they can 
bedizen their own houses with as manjr 
yards of ribbon and cheap lace and staring 
colors. It will also react upon the children 
in those houses, making them think more 
of ornament and display than of better 
things. 

What a delight it is to turn toward 
other homes, not homes of abundant 
wealth, probably; more than likely homes 
where you see the trace of struggle, of 
forethought, of discriminating choice, but 
99 



from which you always carry away some 
feeling of inspiration, a sense of having 
been in a place where life means something 
serious and beautiful and worth the while. 
You feel that the people who live in that 
house have with gladness of heart let go 
the lesser pearls that they may have the 
one of great price ; that having found an 
inspiration in what is best in the world they 
are not content until they and their chil- 
dren can slake their thirst at the living 
fountains. 

It is a long process, to be sure, this 
through which we go in pursuit of the good- 
ly pearl. In one sense it never comes to 
an end. It is with genuine satisfaction that 
we think of the books which in the process 
of the years have got tucked out of sight or 
on the top shelf out of reach. We have an 
almost victorious delight in the thought of 
those various household gods which one 
after another have been doomed to the at- 
tic, over whose door is always written, "All 
hope abandon ye who enter here." The 
changing tastes, the advancing ideals, the 
new sources of inspiration, are they not the 
ioo 



token of our own inward growth? Are 
they not all so many different ways of sell- 
ing the lesser pearls for the one of finer 
quality, of greater price? 

We have been following the stream of 
this parable as it winds along, and have 
at length come to the point where it widens 
out, as when the tide strikes the river and 
makes it an arm of the sea. 

There are implications in this parable 
which bring us out into deeps which we 
have not yet sounded. 

The value of the goodly pearl was, I said, 
inclusive, not exclusive. The value of all 
the lesser pearls was included in it, justified 
and interpreted by it. No man could say 
that the merchant was a fool for selling the 
rest and buying this. He had all the rest 
in this and something besides. 

It is, in other words, Christ's way of say- 
ing that there is one attitude to life, one 
conception and Use of it, which is inclusive 
and universal : one thought of it which is 
the key to all the other thoughts ; one way 
of living which embraces and harmonizes 

IOI 



gfeje Mnmrnnm^ouum 

all other ways ; it is the way that he called 
the kingdom of heaven. 

Now the monastic took that teaching of 
Christ and put this interpretation on it ; he 
said — In order to sell the lesser pearls and 
get the one of great price we must retire 
from the activities of this natural life, this 
mundane svstem, and we must give our- 
selves over to vigils and meditation and the 
life of the spirit. The goodly pearl awaits 
the saint who will make for it the great re- 
nunciation. 

Then modern pietism has taken this teach- 
ing of Christ and put another interpreta- 
tion on it. It has taught men to think of reli- 
gion as a thing in itself; as outside the life of 
man in the world ; it has treated man and 
talked to him as if he were an entire being 
apart from his relation to the world around 
him ; it has laid emphasis upon acts of 
worship, upon the pious mood, upon the act 
of faith as immunity for the future. It is 
not unfairly expressed in what Mr. Ruskin 
once reported of a sermon he had heard 
in an English church. The preacher re- 
minded the people that it was generally 

I02 



admitted that the ways of trade were get- 
ting very bad in England, and that on 
that account they should be more thankful 
they were going to heaven ; to which 
Mr. Ruskin pertinently adds: "It never 
seemed to occur to the preacher that per- 
haps it might be only through amendment 
of their ways in trade that they could ever 
get there." 

Now it is needless to say that neither the 
monastic nor the pietistic thought was in 
the mind of Christ. Religion was to him 
the pearl of great price, not because it 
abandoned, but only because it included 
and interpreted, the whole of life. 

When the day comes, and there are signs 
already of its dawning, in which we can 
think of religion in the inclusive rather than 
the exclusive way, as the key to all the 
chambers of life and not the remotest of 
those chambers itself, then it must make its 
own more genuine and powerful appeal. 

It is not very long since I talked with a 

man whom I have been trying to interest 

in what we are doing here. I said, " I 

haven't seen you at church for a long time.'' 

103 



"No," he said, at first reluctantly, and 
then gravely and sadly, — ' ' No ! To tell you 
the truth, I have been so much absorbed in 
some investments and speculations that I 
have let that go." 

I could not but say, — "I'm sorry for 
you ; " but I realized to the full the in- 
adequacy of the ordinary religious appeal 
to meet a case like that. Of what avail to 
get a man interested in mere religion? To 
tell him that he was losing his soul? That 
he needed to consider his spiritual and 
eternal welfare? Yet I suppose that in 
the ultimate and deepest sense that is 
just what he was doing by his own confes- 
sion, — losing his soul ; losing the spiritual 
perspective of life. 

The mere instinct of acquisition is a sav- 
age instinct ; and it is the duty of a man with 
a soul in him, a potential soul, to be "throw- 
ing off the original sin of our savage inher- 
itance," and to be getting an understanding 
of the spiritual uses of material things ; for is 
not that really what Christ meant when he 
said: " if you seek the kingdom of God 
and its righteousness, the other things shall 
104 



be added to you"? They shall go on, but 
with a new meaning and in a different 
relation to life. 

The religious life which steadies a man 
and compels him to look at life as a whole, is 
likely to curb his acquisitive instincts, to 
prevent them from sweeping him into the 
maelstrom and to give him a calm and no- 
ble appreciation of what acquisition is for 
and of what is to be done with it. A man 
does need religious life, but not as the sub- 
stitute for other life ; he needs it as si the 
master light of all his seeing." 

Does not the truth come home with con- 
vincingness to us all? Are we not all in 
peril of becoming victims to the forms and 
routines through which we do our work ; of 
taking some lesser pearl for the one of 
great price? Is not the teacher in danger 
of thinking more of his system and method 
than of opening the mind toward the 
light? The man of law, of seeing justice 
and truth only through the medium of pre- 
cedents and traditions ; the politician, in 
danger of exalting machinery above states- 
manship ; the scientist, of reflecting so long 
I05 



on the uniformity of law that he misses 
the tokens of a u Presence interfusing all 
things ;" the theologian, of letting God slip 
away from him while he is arranging the 
logical syllogisms which are to demonstrate 
His eternal necessity? 

If we rightly understood and appreciated 
these various uses and occupations of life, 
should we not see that at some point they 
came into contact with life as a whole? 
that they derived whatever worth and 
glory the}' have from the fact that they are 
parts of that eternal purpose which fulfills 
itself through the ages? Is it not to our 
loss that we have tried to think of religion 
as something apart from these fundamental 
uses of life? that we have tried to graft 
religion on to the wild stock, expecting new 
and different fruitage, rather than to bring 
all this underlying life out into its religious 
and divine significance? Of course, one 
has to take full account of temperamental 
differences and of the hesitancy which 
arises from the intellectual temper of the 
times. One can not compel another to 
adopt and sign his creed ; he can not stand 
1 06 



gftje jittramum^jcrmtm 

over him with a lash until he pronounces 
the name of God without stammering or 
shrinking. But that a man should go on 
with his partial life and not know that it is 
partial, not know that in its very partial- 
ness it is still part of the infinite whole, 
" a fragment of the song above/' — this 
above all is the sad and pathetic feature 
of our life. 

And this is the teaching of the parable of 
the pearl. It was worth while giving up 
the lesser pearls for the one of great price, 
because that was so precious in itself, and 
its value hid and included the values of all 
the others which bought it. 

In like manner somewhere around us, if 
we will seek for it, is an interpretation of 
our lives which will lift them up into 
dignity and worth ; there is some justifica- 
tion of these tasks to which we give our 
days and our strength, beyond the need of 
bread-winning, for " man liveth not by 
bread alone." Is it not worth the while to 
seek out that meaning? Is it not worth the 
while to feel the unrest, the partialness, the 
unsatisfactoriness of life, if somewhere at 
107 



last we may find the great peace and know 
in the secret places of our life that " round 
our incompleteness flows His completeness, 
round our restlessness His rest?" 



108 



gfts gfttisftett gij&ttt xrf <®u* Mz&im 



VII 

THE MASTER LIGHT OF OUR 
SEEING 

John 4. 24. — God is a spirit, and they that worship 
Him must worship in spirit and truth. 

kNE never comes upon this fresh and 
profound utterance of Jesus without 
a momentary feeling of the dispropor- 
tion and incongruity between the thought 
uttered and the person to whom it was said. 
There is something imperishable and in- 
exhaustible in the thought, though the form 
of words is familiar enough ; but they fell 
for the first time upon the ears of a giddy 
and gossipy woman whose mind could not 
keep still upon one subject long enough to 
perceive the drift of it, but hopped from 
one idea to another with fatal inconse- 
quence. Familiar with the current catch- 
words of the Samaritan religion she shot 
them forth at Jesus, one after the other, 
mainly to cover the confusion to herself of 
an interview which was fast weaving its 
109 



implications around her personal life. She 
would fain engage Jesus in a debate of 
words upon the ancient feud between Jews 
and Samaritans touching the true place of 
worship : " You say that men ought to 
worship at Jerusalem ; we say that they 
ought to worship here on Mt. Gerizim ; 
tell me which is right." How accurately 
such a question registers the animus of the 
ecclesiastical disputes of every age, and 
how clearly also it reveals how the fact of 
deep and imperishable interest always slips 
through the meshes of the net that was 
meant to catch it ! These Samaritans and 
Jews who were frittering away their time 
in a debate over the place of worship could 
not get beyond that question ; what wor- 
ship meant, what the place was for, when 
it was ascertained ; what clear vision, what 
holier purpose were to enter life through that 
worship, — these were problems which had 
not yet come above their horizon. Yet here 
against the background of this Samaritan 
woman's superficial and parrot-like repeti- 
tion of the current opinions there is thrown 
this contrasting thought of Jesus which, in 
no 



its implications, is the final word upon the 
subject, — " God is a spirit, and those who 
worship Him must worship in spirit and 
truth." 

Its finality lies in the very simplicity 
of the thought ; in the breadth and inclu- 
siveness of it ; it is authoritative, not be- 
cause Jesus said it, but because of its self- 
witnessing character before the deepest 
instincts of the soul. Whenever we con- 
sider the deepest facts and relations of life 
we see how they cohere and find their 
unity in a penetrating perception such as 
this. 

It is, therefore, not so much the signifi- 
cation as the significance of this thought of 
Christ that I want you to consider to-day ; 
not the meaning of it so much as the im- 
port of it. We are not going to spend 
our time in trying to get a definition of 
God, in trying to construct a definition out 
of these words, insisting that it means this 
and not that. Let us rather try to see how 
they are explanatory of facts that lie imbed- 
ded in our very nature ; how they throw as 
bright a light as has ever been thrown upon 
in 



gKz ptasfcev gtjgM of (&uv Mmxuq 

fundamental necessities and desires of hu- 
man life. 

Must it not, in fact, be said that there is a 
certain unsatisfactoriness and fruitlessness, 
in all those " proofs of the existence of 
God " upon which great minds have laid 
such stress? They prove almost everything 
except that which most needs proof or else 
that which is so instinctive and self-evident 
as not to need proof at all. Have you never 
reflected upon such a proof of the existence 
of God as is found in the familiar argument of 
Paleyfrom the evidences of design, andfound 
yourself in just this attitude of dumb help- 
lessness? Of course the man who found a 
watch by the wayside would be right in con- 
cluding that so intricate a piece of mechan- 
ism must have had an ingenious and intelli- 
gent designer, and equally, of course, one, 
looking around him on the universe, would 
conclude that so vast and intricate a mech- 
anism must also have had a designer equal 
in intelligence and skill to the result ; and of 
course again the simple minded Bedouin, 
who has figured so extensively in argu- 
ments of this kind, was right in saying 
112 



when he was asked how he knew there was 
a God, — " In the same way that I know on 
looking at the sand when a man or beast 
has crossed the desert, — by his footprints 
in the world around me." 

We feel helpless before such a demon- 
stration just because it is so true — so true 
in its place. But it leaves us with the 
interrogation still in our hearts, "where 
is God, that I may find him? When shall 
I come and appear before him? " To prove 
that God exists does not of itself give dig- 
nity and peace to life. The proof may be 
of considerable value as collateral security, 
but it can not be drawn on for current need. 
It does not touch that restless craving 
which the psalmist uttered for us all when 
he said, " My soul thirsteth for thee in a 
dry and thirsty land where no water is." 

It is just that desire, deep and funda- 
mental in the soul, which gives us the key to 
religion the world over, and that desire is 
universal. It may be hid away from our 
own conciousness for a time, just as for a 
time we may not be clearly conscious that 
we are social beings, and that it is not good 
8 113 



glte §fest** fgigftl xrt <®xt* MtzirtQ 

for us to be alone. But St. Augustine spoke 
for all mankind when he said, " O God, 
thou madest us for thyself, and our hearts 
are unquiet until they rest in thee." Re- 
ligion has its basis and impulse, not in the 
desire of man to find an adequate proof of 
the existence of God, but in his desire to 
find unity and meaning for his own life, in 
his hunger for the sense of harmony and 
repose which alone give life strength and 
stability, and men will go in search of that 
to the ends of the earth ; it is the pearl of 
great price for which they will sell all other 
pearls until they possess it. 

"A human consciousness can not exist," 
we are told, " without some dawning of rev- 
erence, of an awe and aspiration which is 
as different from fear as it is from presump- 
tion. '* And it is this reverence, this sense of 
a subjection which elevates us, of an obedi- 
ence which makes us free, this conscious- 
ness of a power which curbs and humiliates 
us, but at the same time draws us up to 
itself, which is the essence of religion and 
the source of all man's higher life. 

Now, this it is which is universal and 
114 



persistent, which is in the experience of 
every tribe and nation, in the depths of 
every man's soul, though at times it maybe 
hidden away from his consciousness and is 
always, perhaps, mingled with other things. 
The thread running through all the laby- 
rinthine paths of man's tortuous experience 
is this persisting consciousness that there is 
something which can "give unity to our 
divided and finite existence and lift us 
above its division and finitude ; " that con- 
sciousness which found expression in the 
words of St. Augustine and in the similar 
words of the psalm, " My soul thirsteth for 
thee in a dry and thirsty land where no 
water is." 

If we allow the man who is determined 
to prove the existence of God to come back 
on the stage for a moment he will be sure 
to say, " the desire for God does not prove 
there is a God ; a man's thirst in the desert 
is no evidence that there is somewhere near 
an oasis with its gushing stream of water." 
Truly so, but the capacity for hunger and 
thirst is but the urgent claim of physical 
nature for that which is its proper suste- 
ii5 



She gfcastes ^ight jof ©it* MzzixtQ 

nance. Hunger and thirst are the evidences 
that food and drink exist somewhere, and 
the nameless and persistent hunger of 
the race for that which will explain its 
life, for that which will give it peace, is 
the testimony to the presence somewhere of 
that which can put its questionings to rest 
and give the peace that passeth understand- 
ing. If the persistent hunger for God, the 
unquenchable desire to find some object 
which will " gather to a focus all the mean- 
ing of life," is the fundamental thing in relig- 
ion, then, of course, in this sense, all relig- 
ligions from the beginning of the world are 
true and genuine religions ; a false religion 
is a contradiction in terms. The hunger of 
the heart can not be satisfied with a lie any 
more than the hunger for bread can be sat- 
isfied with a stone. 

" In even savage bosoms 
There are longings, yearnings, strivings 
For the good they comprehend not ; 
And the feeble hands and helpless, 
Groping blindly in the darkness, 
Touch God's right hand in that darkness 
And are lifted up and strengthened." 

116 



There are partial, inadequate, and even 
immoral expressions of the religious im- 
pulse, but a wholly false religion there can 
not be, just because the fundamental im- 
pulse and motive, the thirst for God, in 
which all religion has its origin, is neces- 
sarily the most genuine and holy thing in 
the heart of man. 

But it is nevertheless possible for the re- 
ligious impulse to lose its way, to get tan- 
gled up with other things, to make other 
things uppermost. It is quite possible for re- 
ligion to get side-tracked. Many and many 
a time it has got side-tracked. There will 
very readily occur to us three familiar 
forms of the side-tracking of the religious 
spirit. 

We see it first of all in the part which 
the ritual and ceremonial aspect of re- 
ligion has placed throughout its history. 
All rites and symbols have their probable 
origin in man's instinctive effort to give ex- 
ternal and objective embodiment to the im- 
pulse working within his life. They are a 
dramatic expression and satisfaction of the 
spiritual tendency of life. They represent, 
117 



now in the crude and dreadful form of 
bloody sacrifice, now in the softened ex- 
pressions of sacraments and liturgies, the 
effort of the human spirit to find that which 
will focus the meaning of life ; but the time 
comes when for many the symbol over- 
shadows that which it was meant to sym- 
bolize ; when the keeping of the sacrament 
and the performance of the liturgical form 
stand for w r orship and are allowed to pass 
for the religious life. 

We see another side-tracking of the re- 
ligious impulse in the exaggerated empha- 
sis upon emotional life. There are many 
historic examples. The eighteenth century 
deism, which it has been said was intended 
to "knock feeling in the head, issued at 
length in a new burst of feeling." It found 
expression on the religious side in the ex- 
treme reaction from a dry and formal relig- 
ion into one of emotion and the free play of 
the religious sensibilities. Many of the 
most influential and popular embodiments 
of religion in this century have been a sort 
of t( Puritanism of the emotions." We 
find the extreme illustrations of it in the 
118 



types of religion prevailing among the col- 
ored people in many localities where re- 
ligion is the riot of the emotions, of the 
untrained sensibility and the uncurbed 
imagination. But this is only the extreme 
illustration of a typical condition. The 
touchstone of one type of religion dur- 
ing this century has been the revival, with 
its power to unloose the dumb tongues of 
men and make them bear testimony to a 
new life. 

The third instance of which we will speak 
is the side-tracking of religion into the 
field of ethics. When we consider how 
ceremonialism and emotionalism have in 
turn been substituted for religion, the re- 
action into an expression of the religious 
life, in which duty or conduct get all the 
emphasis, seems natural enough. It is then 
that James' definition of religion comes into 
vogue with new force — " Pure religion and 
undefiled before God and the father is this, to 
visit the widows and the fatherless and to 
keep one's self unspotted from the world." 

The reaction is necessary and natural 
enough, but when all is said must we not 
119 



still maintain that the exchange of a litur- 
gical routine or an emotional routine for a 
routine of conduct is not to touch the high- 
water mark of religion? for great as is the 
word duty — strong and stalwart and noble 
as it is — duty is still not the final word ; it is 
not the finest, the divinest attitude of the 
human soul. Duty can not of itself focus 
the whole meaning of life ; it can summon 
to the struggle, but it can not give life its 
sense of harmony and rest, can not inter- 
pret it in its wholeness. Notwithstanding 
all travesties of its meaning, Paul saw with 
a divine insight when he said, "Ye are 
saved by faith." 

Thus we draw near to the thought of 
Christ : " God is a spirit and they who 
worship him must worship in spirit and 
truth." It is a simple and direct way of 
saying that God is everywhere, that he 
dwells in all life, that he is immanent. 

But this does not describe or define God ; 
it does not represent him to the senses or the 
imagination ; it simply cuts the strings of that 
ancient prejudice which tied him down to 
one special spot. It is almost the equiva- 
120 



lent of saying that God is * ' in the air. " And 
it is quite the equivalent of saying that reli- 
gion is in the air ; it is an atmosphere about 
human life. It is not something distinct from 
life and the relations which we sustain to 
one another and the world about us ; it is 
not a new relation which may be added to 
the other relations of our life ; it is rather 
the air which we breathe ; it is " the master 
light of all our seeing." 

Something like this seems to be the in- 
spiring suggestion in these words of Christ, 
— " God is a spirit" ; he is the surrounding 
and indwelling life ; religion is the instinct- 
ive response to that great fact ; it is wor- 
ship in spirit and truth. It is the reverent 
use of our own bodies and minds because 
God is in them ; the reverent attitude toward 
every fellow-man, every dumb creature, 
every tree and flower of the field, because 
in them also the divine life is immanent. 

It was because Christ thought of religion 
in a way that was at once simple and broad 
that he was able to see how spontaneous it 
was in the life of a child ; how fitting a 
symbol the child was of the kingdom of 
121 



$h& Pastes %iQh% of ®ux ^jettt^ 

God. " Heaven lies about us in our in- 
fancy." It is because we have so gener- 
ally come to think of religion in a forced 
and artificial way, as something of the na- 
ture of a contagious disease which may be 
contracted if we are properly exposed to 
it, which keeps so many people in painfully 
strained and reticent relations with their 
children. 

It may seem paradoxical, but might not 
that be the most religious home where the 
least was said directly about religion as a 
thing in itself. For it is not a thing in itself; 
it can not be ; it is spurious and counterfeit 
when it becomes a thing in itself, something 
to be worked for and lived for and or- 
ganized for as a self-existent entity. Un- 
less it is the atmosphere of the home or the 
community where life develops in rever- 
ence, and in a sense of the blessedness and 
sanctity of life, then what can possibly save 
it from the unreligious estimate and use ? 
"God is spirit," and so religion is that 
attitude to life in which man breathes life 
and quickening power. 

Through the perception of what is sug- 



gested in Christ's words to the Samaritan 
woman the religious life would be kept true 
to its own genuine movement ; there can be 
no side-tracking, no substitution of a sub- 
ordinate thing for the main thing ; for while 
religion will become deepened and purified 
by the agency of all the forces which accom- 
pany human life in its progress, it will al- 
ways maintain its own integrity, its own 
surpassing greatness and glory by being 
still the air in which man breathes, the 
light in which he sees. 



Question £hat CGouXd. giot 2£c Anstucrcd 



VIII 

THE QJJESTION THAT COULD NOT 
BE ANSWERED 

John x. 24 — How long dost thou hold us in suspense? 
If thou art the Christ, tell us plainly. 

0r OMEWHERE among the corridors 

^M of that great temple at Jerusalem a 
ego little group of men had been holding 
a hurried but eager consultation. In an- 
other of its corridors the person who was 
the object of their conference was walking 
back and forth. It was the annual feast of 
the dedication of the temple, and because 
it was the winter season Jesus was walking 
there in Solomon's porch instead of in the 
open air, in the company of the birds of the 
heavens and the flowers of the field. Back 
and forth there he was walking, perhaps 
alone wrapped in his own calm and deep 
reflections, perhaps with a friend or a dis- 
ciple, glad in the companionship of a hu- 
man heart. 

This group of men yonder, moved by 
124 



feelings of mingled curiosity, wonder and 
hostility, with perhaps a little genuine sym- 
pathy on the part of some, were resolving 
on a course of action. The young prophet 
from Nazareth had now for months been 
drawing unusual attention to himself. He 
had inaugurated no movement of a political 
or military character ; it was simply a series 
of humane and beneficent deeds, and a cer- 
tain new spirit and impulse of life for which 
he was responsible. But no one could 
shine in that Jewish firmament for any 
length of time with more than ordinary 
brilliance without having the question 
spring up here and there regarding him : 
Is he the Messiah? 

The condition of things was in some 
respects like the political temper of the 
people in our land in the year of a 
presidential election. People are asking 
about this man and that one — is he likely 
to be a candidate? Has he the necessary 
qualifications? Is he likely to declare him- 
self as seeking the nomination? The cases 
are not entirely parallel, but the play of 
motives and sentiments is much the same. 
125 



%tcsixjotx glial ®onl& got gfje Jtixswetxa 

There was a popular sensitiveness, needing 
but a touch to be turned into turbulence ; 
there was a disposition to discuss the Mes- 
sianic possibilities of any one who had done 
anything out of the ordinary routine. John 
the Baptist had been the subject of this 
popular discussion, but even before the im- 
prisonment and death of John the tide of 
favor was turning in the direction of Jesus 
of Nazareth. 

The chief success of Jesus and his most 
enthusiastic following were in Galilee. It 
was not so easy to create enthusiasm in 
Jerusalem ; not so easy for any one to get a 
following there. Jerusalem was the capital 
and it was the ecclesiastical center ; it was 
the seat of culture and learning. The 
schools were there ; the great rabbis were 
there ; the priesthood was centered there ; 
and these men had tests of their own which 
they applied, — tests which perhaps the 
simpler-minded peasants of Galilee would 
not think of applying. At Jerusalem cre- 
dentials would count for as much as charac- 
ter. The Galileans would be content with 
asking what a man could do ; they had been 
126 



profoundly moved by what Jesus had done 
among them. 

But with the religious doctors all that 
was of inconsiderable account. They 
wanted to know what were the antecedents 
of a man, what were his vouchers and pass- 
ports. The Messiah when he comes must 
be the prescribed Messiah ; he must con- 
form to the Messiah of their teaching ; to 
the idea of him which they have formulated 
and impressed upon their minds. 

They were always meeting the argument 
of deeds and character with the counter- 
argument of credentials and authority. If 
one chanced to say, — " This is of truth the 
prophet; this is the Christ" — back came 
the answer: "What! Doth Christ come 
out of Galilee? Hath not the scripture 
said that the Christ cometh of the seed of 
David, and from Bethlehem, the village 
where David was?" 

If the blind man pointed to his opened 
eyes as the ground of his gratitude and 
faith in Jesus, was there not some proper 
scribe at his side to reprove him at once 
and to remind him that God had spoken to 
127 



Question glxat <$auld Hot ge ^nsvozxzfi, 

Moses, but " as for this man we know not 
whence he is?" Did not the gentle Na- 
thanael himself, who became a disciple, 
share the national prejudice and feel stag- 
gered for the moment, as his question im- 
plies, — " Can any good thing come out of 
Nazareth?" 

This is very instructive because it helps 
us to understand a tendency and disposition 
w r hich always exist in the world, — that of 
estimating the character and work of men, 
not directly in the light of their lives and 
deeds, but indirectly in the light of what is 
merely official and accidental. The world 
always has its contingent of people who 
must first locate and label a man before 
they can understand him or be able to esti- 
mate the truth of what he says. 

They must first know whether the man 
belongs to their party or their church, be- 
fore they have a basis for determining the 
truth of what he says. This is precisely 
the attitude of these men of Christ's time, 
and they maintained their attitude with a 
heat and acrimony which has never been 

128 



ajtuestimx Stat GF onlti, Uxrt gje Juxsttrjerjed 

surpassed, though indeed it never wholly 
subsides. 

It is an exhibition of this spirit which we 
meet in the question which was asked of 
Jesus as he walked in Solomon's porch. 
This group of men had decided on a course 
of action ; they had resolved to submit the 
question of Messiahship directly to Jesus 
himself. So they crowd about him and 
their spokesman puts the question, — " How 
long dost thou keep us in suspense? If 
thou art the Christ tell us plainly." 

It looks like an ingenuous and simple 
question. It has all the air of artlessness. 
But you can see at once that if they per- 
suade Jesus to admit that he is the Messiah 
they intend to deluge him with their ques- 
tions about origin and credentials and 
authority. They will do it under the guise 
of being simply seekers after truth, but they 
will do it nevertheless. There are possibly 
elements of genuine wonder, confusion 
and perplexity of mind involved in their 
attitude, but in the main the whole proceed- 
ing betrays the lack of the simplicity and 



129 



ajttjesticrtt gfmi (ftjottttf Hut ge &%x&wzx&& 

candor which mark the genuine seeker after 
truth. 

But let us leave now the motives of the 
questioners and turn to the question which 
they asked and to the manner in which 
Jesus treated it. He did not answer it 
directly. He seemed to evade an answer. 
He said : " I told you and ye believe not ; 
the works that I do in my Father's name, 
these bear witness of me." It was custom- 
ary for Christ to meet certain questioners 
and their questions in this way. Once he 
was asked by some of the scribes : "By 
what authority doest thou these things, and 
who gave thee this authority?" And he 
turned the question aside by asking whether 
or not they believed that John the Baptist 
was sent of God or only of men. 

Now why is this? Why should any 
question be parried or evaded? Grant even 
that the motive of the questioner is wrong, 
is not the simple and direct answer always 
the best answer? When this group of men 
crowded around Jesus with the question on 
their lips, — If thou art the Christ tell us 

130 



C^tuestijcrtt gtxat (g oultl §tot %z &nswzxz& 

plainly, why did he not tell them plainly 
and answer " Yes " or " No"? 

Upon the answer to this question depends 
the answer to a great many questions like 
it. Therefore, let us seriously and atten- 
tively consider this one. 

The case seems a simple one. It looks 
on the face of it as if so direct a question 
could be answered by yes or no ; but it is 
not so simple as that, and when we think of 
it we shall find that it was not a question 
which Christ could have answered by yes 
or no. 

He could not have given that kind of 
answer for the reason that, while such an 
answer may have met the terms of the 
question and may have satisfied the ques- 
tioner, it would not have gone to the heart 
of the matter and would have diverted the 
attention of the questioner from the real to 
a superficial thing. These men who came 
with their question represented a class who 
judge people more by credentials than by 
character ; who understand a person or 
a movement or a situation by the label 
which designates it. There were certain 
131 



Qtusttott gftat ®0\xX& gat JJe £nsvozvz& 

ideas, hopes and tendencies which, by those 
people around Christ, were collectively 
designated by the title, * Messiah.' That 
word became at length a stereotyped ex- 
pression to represent the current ideas and 
expectations. They understood, or sup- 
posed they understood, a person if he could 
be classified by means of that formula 
which was familiar to them all. This is 
the explanation of the anxiety manifested 
by so many to get Christ to accept the 
Messianic label. If they can only learn 
whether or not he will apply the stereotyped 
form to himself, then they will know what 
to think of him ; they will know how to 
estimate his deeds and his words. It all 
expresses itself in that urgent question, — If 
thou art the Christ tell us plainly. 

Suppose Jesus had said, — "Yes, I am 
the Christ." What then? Those who had 
a hostile purpose would have immediately 
plied him with questions about his author- 
ity and credentials, but there would have 
been a remnant whom the answer would 
have satisfied. They would have gone 
away contented, saying : "That is all we 
132 



OJttsstijortx Stmt ©mtttf ©at gje Juxswrnxd 

want to know ; he says he is the Messiah ; 
now we understand him." But would they 
have understood him? Far from it ; for in 
all these things which affect the constant 
movement of our life, these things which 
affect what we may call the dynamic rela- 
tions of life, the labels and the stereotyped 
formulas hinder and mislead more than 
they help. They are a device for doing 
away with the necessity of thinking for our- 
selves, of looking at life as it is, of seeing 
the fact and of judging of life by life 
itself. 

Let us confess that a label is a very use- 
ful thing in its place and when confined to 
the purposes which it is intended to serve. 
A label is useful on the backs of the 
books in a library. It is very convenient 
to have the titles designated in that way. 
We can tell without the trouble of taking it 
down from the shelf whether a book which 
resembles a dozen others is a volume of 
poetry or philosophy or political economy. 
But the case is different if, after hearing 
one read for hours from the volume of 
poetry, we should bring him a handful of 
*33 



OJujestijcrn gtmt ©xrtttd &q% ge &nswzx&& 

labels and ask him to designate on the 
back what the book was. It would be 
pertinent to reply, — " If you do not already 
know, the label will not help you." And this 
was for substance what Christ said to those 
men: "I told you and ye believe not; 
the works that I do in my Father's name, 
these bear witness of me." 

So a direct answer of yes or no would 
not have been the true answer ; it would not 
really have helped the questioner. If we 
want our books labeled on the back in or- 
der that we may know in which alcove and 
on which shelf to put them and care noth- 
ing for the contents of them, then one 
would be less helpful to us by pasting the 
proper labels on the back than he would be 
if he simply turned us over to the books 
themselves and said : " Read and find out 
for yourself what they are." 

Therefore we find the wise Christ taking 
always this very course. He seeks to turn 
men from the name to the deed ; from the 
formal and stereotyped term to the essential 
principle ; from the label to life. 

He did, indeed, at the outset, according 

134 



tynZ&tXOU gftat C&jCWld gxrt ^Z &U&WZXZ& 

to Luke's account, indicate something like 
a program of action ; in the synagogue at 
Nazareth, in a reference to the prophet 
Isaiah, he intimated what he believed the 
work of the Messiah would be, a very dif- 
ferent work, too, from that which the peo- 
ple were expecting. Then straightway he 
enters on a life which in its broad outlines 
was indicated by that great prophecy of 
" the acceptable year of the Lord," the 
year of human emancipation from every 
kind of bondage. 

But from every appeal of men to put on 
the Messianic label he turned away. You 
remember how his friend and kinsman, 
John the Baptist, sent his messengers to 
Jesus with the pathetic and pleading ques- 
tion : "Art thou he that should come, 
or do we still look for another ? " Not 
even to that dear friend of his, that man 
whose work he had himself, in a sense, 
taken up, would he send back a satisfying 
answer ; not the answer of the stereotyped 
formula ; to him also he must say only, — 
"Look and see; the blind receive their 
sight and the lame walk, the lepers are 
135 



Qiustitfu gftat ®onW girt gSe &nswzxza 

cleansed and the deaf hear, and the poor 
have good tidings preached to them." 
" Go and tell that to John," he said to the 
messengers, " and tell him also that blessed 
is he who shall find no occasion of stum- 
bling in me." 

And from that time to this time when the 
men crowded around him in the temple 
corridor, Christ was pursuing that course. 
He felt the stern necessity of turning men 
from the title of the book to its contents and 
of telling them to see, to read, to think for 
themselves. 

This is the chief reason why Christ did 
not give a direct and simple answer to the 
question ; he was not willing, by the adop- 
tion of a title, to send men off believing that 
they understood him because they under- 
stood the general and current meaning of a 
formula which he had accepted as applying 
to himself. He was not willing even to 
that degree to take men out of the vital cur- 
rents of life, to turn them aside from the real 
and concrete experiences of life to the easy 
adoption of an abstract term ; he would not 

136 



even to that degree give them a stone in- 
stead of bread. 

The applications of this principle to life 
are direct and important. There is almost 
no department of human life in which men 
do not coin formulas and labels which sum 
up certain tendencies and phases of belief 
and action. These become the watch- 
words, the rallying-cries, the standards of 
the religious, the political and the social 
life. There are thousands of people who 
would listen to an exposition of some prin- 
ciple of religious faith and life and not 
know whether they believed it or not until 
they learned to which school of thought 
the speaker belonged. There are multi- 
tudes who would hearken to an exposition 
of the current national issues and not be 
quite certain whether to applaud or with- 
hold applause until they had made sure of 
the political affiliation of the speaker. We 
have seen men time and again in public 
meetings listen to the arguments which 
were intended to shape opinion and direct 
decision, and then be utterly unable to de- 
cide on which side of the question to vote 
137 



Question glxat ©ould got gje Jutsxox*ext 

until they had caught the approving nod of 
their leader. The masses of men know 
the meaning of a shibboleth, of a party 
watchword ; they understand the uses of a 
label, though it may reveal nothing as to 
the real character of what is labeled. For 
even a jar of precious ointment might, by 
some mischance, have a skull and cross- 
bones label on the cover. 

This illustrates what we may call the in- 
fluence of the label ; it shows us that the 
label covers a multitude of ignorances, and 
that in many instances it is merely the no- 
tification that at that point men have stopped 
thinking. 

When men with too easy complaisance 
permit themselves to be designated by the 
current formulas in any domain of life, 
when by the adoption of a label they leave 
it to be inferred that they represent what 
the label indicates to the men who use it, 
they have done that much to stop the 
wheels of life. It is not enough to say that 
you are this, that or the other; you must 
make men see what the meaning is behind 
the formula — to break up the formula, in- 

138 



deed, if necessary, in order to have the 
meaning seen. You must be able to answer 
them in the spirit of Christ's answer to 
John, " Go tell John the things that you see 
and hear. Do not tell him that I am the 
Messiah ; that is nothing ; tell him that the 
blind see, the deaf hear and the poor have 
good tidings preached to them." 

But there is a further reason why Christ 
could not have given a single "yes" to this 
question. It would not have been a faith- 
ful and helpful answer to the people them- 
selves, but besides this it would not have 
been an adequate answer so far as Jesus 
himself was concerned. There was no 
formula, no stereotyped expression, even 
then or now, that was adequate to the ex- 
pression of all that he was and knew him- 
self to be. The Messiah idea was in- 
trenched in the life of the Jewish people ; 
it was the term which represented the mis- 
sion and work of the coming emancipator, 
and it had to be reckoned with. It would 
have the same kind of bearing upon a man 
that official titles of any sort have ; to some 
they would signify something important 

J 39 



OJujestijcrtt gtat ®ou\& §tot gs ^xswzxzd 

and essential, to others they would be un- 
important, of some transient and superficial 
value, but easily put aside in the interest ot 
larger and truer distinctions. In our day, 
a man who serves his fellow-men through 
the medium of preaching is designated as 
a clergyman, and is entitled to be addressed 
as reverend. That title and distinction 
doubtless seem to some a matter of consid- 
erable consequence. Many, on the other 
hand, would be glad to have it put away 
and forgotten, because it is not merely un- 
important but oftentimes misleading, tend- 
ing to perpetuate ecclesiastical distinctions 
and to prevent the growth of the real and 
human aspects of Christianity and of the 
relation of men to men. 

These titles are simply a part of the in- 
herited furniture of a religious past, the 
heirlooms of ecclesiasticism. Men who 
serve their fellow-men in certain definite 
ways find themselves the natural inheritors 
of them, and they are often harmless 
enough. To a real and genuine man they 
do not signify much either one way or the 
other, but a real man, on the other hand, 
140 



can not possibly measure his life and influ- 
ence and work by means of them ; he must 
realize that his life means something more 
and his work something better than the 
clerical and ecclesiastical labels can possi- 
bly represent. 

So the title, Messiah, was simply that 
which represented the work of the man who 
was to serve the nation in a certain way. 
There were many men in Jewish history 
who called themselves Messiahs, and who 
were regarded as such by the people, and 
Christ must have looked on that title in just 
the way that a genuine person would look 
upon anything that was merely a title and 
formula. He was the Messiah indeed. If 
any one could with truth claim that title 
Christ could claim it. If any one had arisen 
as the real emancipator, the true savior of 
his people and of mankind, it was Jesus. 
And he could have said to all men with the 
most absolute truth, "I am the Messiah 
indeed." There were occasions in fact 
when he did claim the title and declare that 
in him were fulfilled the hopes and long- 
ings of the older prophets. 
141 



Question ghat Cauld got %z &nsvozxz& 

But that was not all. He knew that the 
office and the title did not exhaust the 
meaning of his life. He knew that they 
could not adequately interpret all that he 
was and all that he wished to do. There- 
fore, not only in justice to the people who 
asked him to tell them plainly if he was the 
Christ, but in justice to himself he must tell 
them neither yes nor no, but must point 
them to what he had said and done. This 
aspect of Christ's answer also has its bear- 
ing on our current life, for if the Messiah- 
idea was not adequate to express all that 
was there in the personality and character 
of Christ, if the Jewish label was not able 
to describe him, is it not true that no name, 
no title, no office under which men have 
tried to understand and interpret Christ can 
be exhaustive of his personality? 

Men have lost something of the real in- 
fluence of Christ by confining themselves 
to considerations of his offices and nature. 
It seems so simple and so easy to confront 
one with the question, — Do you believe that 
Christ is divine? Or do you believe he is 
merely human? It seems to many that in 
142 






asking a question like that, they have asked 
something that is really ultimate and struct- 
ural. So that to face a man with a ques- 
tion like that, to corner him with it, to com- 
pel him straightway to tell plainly which of 
the two things he thinks, seems an ingeni- 
ous and adroit way of getting at the ulti- 
mate phase of his faith. But it is like the 
question which was asked of Christ, and it 
is more often than otherwise simply unan- 
swerable in terms of yes and no. For there is 
nothing in life that is merely human or mere- 
ly divine. The assumed antithesis is not 
there ; the chasm does not exist. And 
Christ would find it as difficult, as impossi- 
ble, to answer in a word the burning ques- 
tions of our modern theology as he did this 
central question of the Jewish theology. 
For consider what the plain answers to 
these questions about Christ have yielded ! 
One man gets his plain answer: "Yes, 
Christ is divine; he is God." Then his 
deified Christ becomes an object of wor- 
ship, moved into the heavens apart, his 
work for man accomplished and regarded 
as mediatorial in a purely external sense. 
H3 



Question Qtrnt ©cwld sfiLot ge &nsxozv&& 

Another man goes away with the oppo- 
site answer : " Christ is human ; he is only 
a man after all," and though the thought 
yields comfort, a certain relief and inspira- 
tion, yet there remains still some thought of 
thechasm between human and divine ; 
Christ is claimed for humanity as exclu- 
sively as before he was claimed for divinity. 

But right there in the exclusiveness of 
either claim, in the assumption of the im- 
passable gulf between God and man, lies 
the fatal mistake. 

Therefore no man has a right to fix the 
terms of his question in an exclusive way, 
to confront us with the alternative and 
compel us to say plainly whether we be- 
lieve in a Christ that is merely divine or 
one that is merely human. The only true 
answer ever to make to questions like that 
is to say, — I do not believe in a mere any- 
thing. 

So then, when we really come to feel 
that the personality of Jesus has a sweep 
and an influence that can not possibly be 
measured in the current formulas about 
him, our interest in the formulas will abate 
144 



ajujestixro Stat ®onX& Hut %z &n&w&x&& 

and we shall seek to put ourselves in the 
way of feeling the power and the gracious 
touch of that life which is still with us as 
of old, for "faith hath yet its Olivet and 
love its Galilee." 

"We can be persons and feel the influ- 
ence of persons, but personality is some- 
thing other than any definition of it." 

Is it not so in our relations with one an- 
other? You come in contact with a fellow- 
man and long after you have forgotten his 
name, his office, his rank or place in life, 
you remember the grasp of the friendly 
hand, the expression of the soul through 
the eyes, the new outlook upon life through 
a few inspiring words. 

Above all is this true of Jesus. Greater 
devotion has never been paid to the name 
of anyone than to his name, even though it 
be often a false devotion, missing the real 
secret of his spirit. What then, when men 
shall learn the secret of Jesus and submit 
themselves to the full influence of his per- 
sonality ! What will be, when he shall 
have ceased to be a shibboleth and shall 
dwell in the hearts of men as a perpetual 
10 145 



GJttjestitfit gliat Would g*jcrt ;§* &uswtx&a 

inspiration and power ! When the " reli- 
gion which has taken Jesus for its object 
becomes the religion which Jesus professed ! 
When his faith shall be the faith of man, 
his thought of God our thought, his thought 
of man ours, his outlook on the whole of 
life, our outlook ! 

To ancient and modern questioners there 
is one answer, — " I told you and ye believe 
not ; the works that I do in my Father's 
name these bear witness of me." 

The way out of all chaos of the heart 
and mind, the path which leads far away 
from the cliffs of despair and darkness, is 
the way in which Jesus walked. And the 
light which enters life is not that which 
comes from the acceptance of authority, 
but that which proceeds from the influence 
of a life which has in it no weakness nor 
any thing that is dark. It is as Jesus said, 
— " He that followeth me shall not walk in 
darkness, but shall have the light of life." 



146 



glue ^zszxkzs uf gif je 

IX 

THE RESERVES OF LIFE 

Psalm xxxii. 7. — Thou art my hiding-place. 

OO HE temple at Jerusalem was con- 
4%^ structed, one court or sanctuary 
cT^ within another, each expressing 
some new degree of sacredness and priva- 
cy. The outer portion was the court of the 
Gentiles, a common meeting place for the 
people of all races and faiths, a kind of 
fringe of the temple where the religious 
life shaded off into the common intercourse 
and traffic of secular concerns ; inscriptions 
in Greek and Latin were posted in this 
outer court warning all Gentiles that upon 
penalty of death they must not pass this 
outer corridor ; then followed in order the 
court of women ; the court of Israelites 
accessible to Jewish men ; the court of the 
priests, for the officials of religion only ; the 
holy place which contained the table of 
shew-bread, the golden candlestick and 
the altar of incense ; and last of all the 
H7 



gfre %zstxMts erf %iU 

innermost shrine, the holy of holies, ut- 
terly empty and dark, shut off from the 
other courts by the thick impenetrable veil, 
entered only once a year by the high priest 
of the nation on the great day of atone- 
ment, when he went there alone after long 
vigils and fasting to make offering for the 
sins of the people. 

Thus step by step, court by court, God 
was put at a distance from the common, sec- 
ular life of the people ; he was made inac- 
cessible to its ordinary and familiar aspects ; 
he was brought near only by a series of 
mediated relations in which the indirect 
and official communion took the place of 
the more direct and personal. The temple, 
which was the supreme symbol of the Jew- 
ish faith, was a splendid contrivance for 
the expression of the inapproachableness of 
God, for what we sometimes call the tran- 
scendence of the divine nature. It stands 
in entire contrast with a religion like that 
of Greece in which gods and men were 
ever mingling ; where the gods indeed 
were "immortal men, and the men were 
mortal gods.'' Hegel called Judaism the 
148 



religion of sublimity and the Greek the re- 
ligion of beauty ; and perhaps the chief 
difference between sublimity and beauty is 
that the sublime extracts the spiritual from 
the natural and seeks to understand and 
reverence the spiritual by itself, while 
beauty is a recognition of the spiritual 
quality within nature, inseparable from it, 
unintelligible apart from it. 

The Jewish prophets, even in their sub- 
limest poetry, it has been said, "chose the 
stormy agencies of nature as the symbol of 
the divine rather than the more ordinary 
and apparently regular phenomena of na- 
ture. The action of God on the world is 
regarded by them as disturbing, transform- 
ing, miraculously interfering with the usual 
order of things, rather than establishing 
and maintaining that order ; it is treated, 
to use the language of geology, as cata- 
strophic rather than evolutionary. Or, if 
nature is regarded as revealing him, it is 
rather negatively than positively, by the 
way in which she trembles before him, or 
shrinks up into nothing in his presence. 
The leading thought of the poetry of Israel 
149 



Jglx* SUsjevtxjes of %ifz 

is that of the transcendent might and glory 
of a being for whom ' Lebanon is not suffi- 
cient to burn nor the beasts thereof for a 
burnt offering,' and who ' taketh up the 
isles as a very little thing.' " 

Therefore the construction of the Jewish 
temple symbolizes the pervading element in 
their religious life, the thought of the sub- 
limity, the might, the solitary and inap- 
proachable holiness of the transcendent 
God. He comes most potently and effectu- 
ally into relation with human life in that 
holy of holies where he is at the greatest 
remove from the personal life and touches 
it only through the highest development of 
the principle of mediation. 

There is nothing more interesting, or 
more fruitful to thought, than to trace the 
working of these two contrasted but supple- 
mentary ideas, to watch the working of the 
principles of sublimity and beauty, tran- 
scendence and immanence, remoteness and 
nearness, — to see how these ideas, both in 
their separateness and their blending, have 
affected the life of the world ; nor is it 
difficult to discover that the process is still 
150 



glue gtjesjetttfjes xrf %xf z 

going on ; that stable equilibrium has not 
yet been attained ; that final synthesis of 
the two principles is not yet entirely made, 
and that consequently we have not yet 
reached the final condition of the religious 
life. 

But leaving this suggestion, let us to-day 
follow a different clew. For without ques- 
tion a great and true thought was strug- 
gling for expression in that symbolic em- 
bodiment of the Hebrew faith. Although 
we can not permanently rest in the thought 
of the remoteness of God, which was con- 
veyed in the holy of holies, no more can we 
feel that the final word was spoken in those 
religions which brought the gods down 
from Olympus to live with men on too fa- 
miliar terms. Some word evidently remains 
to be spoken ; we feel the incompleteness 
of it all as we look on the solemn scenes of 
that Hebrew ritual ; but when we turn from 
that to look on the religious life of Greece 
or Rome, that " untroubled pagan world of 
beauty," we rightly feel that the funda- 
mental lack in them was that they had not 
as yet fully " wakened to a soul." 



Now in the Hebrew faith there had taken 
place the wakening of the soul ; there was 
a vivid consciousness of the spiritual ele- 
ment in life ; but it was, so to say, a too sen- 
sitive consciousness ; the soul was awake, 
but it stood naked before God ; it was wait- 
ing to be clothed upon ; it stood in shame 
before its Maker, conscious more of the 
differences between them than of the ties of 
kinship. 

So we have, upon the one hand, a relig- 
ious development in which the soul stands 
self-conscious, but naked and ashamed, 
that consciousness creating the transcend- 
ent thought of God and symbolizing itself 
in the holy of holies ; on the other hand, a 
religious development in which the soul as 
yet lies dormant, the spiritual element sub- 
merged in the natural, and the divine life 
immanent chiefly because the spiritual na- 
ture has not yet developed to the point 
which makes the repulsion of God the first 
instinctive effort of the soul. 

Therefore it is not difficult to see where 
lies the permanent truth that is symbol- 
ized in that half-truth of the holy of holies ; 
*5 2 



for it emphasizes the great fact that al- 
though God is immanent, dwelling within 
all life, coming near to all life, " closer 
than breathing and nearer than hands and 
feet," yet he is by no means exhausted in 
these forms of life that appear ; he is not 
spread out over nature as a sort of veneer 
to give it finish and the appearance of 
solidity and value. There are reserve ele- 
ments in the nature of God, and deep upon 
deep which no man has yet fathomed and 
no man can. 

This Hebrew temple with its outer and 
inner courts does afford some genuine hint 
of the relations in which God mediates him- 
self to human life, for there is no more 
august and important truth than that which 
we are beginning to realize in these latter 
days, that the walls between the secular 
and the sacred in the old-time sense are 
battered down ; that God is in the marts of 
trade ; in the hurrying, swift-moving wheels 
of industry, moving back and forth in all 
the transformations of the material life. In 
all this outermost court of life, the court of 
the Gentiles, God dwells. It has been the 
i$3 



supreme task of our age, it is even now the 
most significant of its undertakings to reas- 
sert this truth, lost in the mazes of the 
ecclesiastical consciousness. "The Gos- 
pel of the Secular Life " is the inscription 
which more and more are writing upon the 
banners that are to float over their temples 
of worship and prayer ; and no effort can 
be more praiseworthy or more deserving of 
success than the effort to make men hear 
the echoes of the divine footsteps in these 
outer corridors of life where they have long 
ceased to look for God and to expect his 
presence. 

Nevertheless the supreme relative value 
of this undertaking should not confuse us, 
should not blind our eyes to the complete 
truth ; for just as "the life is more than 
meat and the body than raiment," so there 
are reserve elements in the nature of God 
of which all this secular process discloses 
nothing. 

So again, if we leave the outermost 

court, the court of traffic, of selling of doves 

and sheep, and approach that interior court, 

the place where poets dwell, who are the 

*54 



gtxje gtjesjmrjes of gtfje 

priests ministering in this holy place, there 
also we discover the divine presence in the 
quiet beauty of nature, in the loveliness of 
the flowers, in the onmoving of the seasons, 
in sun and moon and stars, in the noiseless 
growth of the grass, in the throbbing tides 
of the sea, in the brooding care of the 
mother-bird, in the storm and the ava- 
lanche, in all the thousand moods, the 
ceaseless movement of this outward uni- 
verse. When we feel the presence that "dis- 
turbs us with the joy of elevated thoughts," 
when we look on all 

" The splendor of the morning sky, 
And all the stars in company, 
And think, How beautiful it is ! — 
Our soul says — there is more than this." 

And there is more than this. There is 
yet the most holy place, the quiet solitudes 
of the soul, the place unoccupied and dark 
until God comes and illumines it with his 
own light. God is immanent in nature in- 
deed ; God is present in the whole secular 
process indeed. We have not to take from 
all that side of life one straw's weight to be 
155 



$hz QtSZXVZS of %ift 

able to assert with ever-increasing empha- 
sis that God is still more intimately in the 
solitudes of the heart of man, for why was 
man created if it were not that the divine 
life was striving for some more adequate 
expression of itself than is found in the 
growth of the grass and the pulsing of the 
tides? 

There is always one moment, one stage 
in the transformation of material conditions, 
when it is almost impossible to say whether 
the material is in one condition or the other. 
There is one point where the solid is just 
passing into the liquid, and the liquid is 
just passing into vapor. 

So there is one word which has had a 
curious history in the development of 
human thought, a word that has had to 
bear more weight than almost any other, 
and because of its misuses has been the 
occasion of more bewilderment and conflict 
than almost any other. It is the word " per- 
son " or ''personality." Personality is 
that quality of life which bestows a worthy 
meaning upon the saying of the Greeks 
that the gods were "immortal men" and 



gftje §ksje**rjes of ftftz 

men were " mortal gods." It is a word 
descriptive of that fusion or passage from 
one state into another which men have tried 
to express under the idea of incarnation. 
Personality is the meeting place of the 
divine and the human. Or, to restate the 
same thought in the words of a friend, — 
"Personality (in man) has itself been 
emerging as it has been laying hold of the 
personality of God ; its growth has been 
keeping time with its own activity. Hence 
when we look at the history of religion to 
discover what the mind of man has reported 
concerning God, we are examining a pro- 
cess in which not only has the tool em- 
ployed left its mark upon the result, but 
the material dealt with has in turn left its 
mark upon the tool. In other words, we 
are studying a process of discovery in which 
the object to be discovered has been con- 
structive of the organ by which it should 
at length be known. Human personality 
seeking the divine has been the primitive 
eye groping for the light and the answering 
light at length hath made it strong to see."* 

*Rev. Charles F. Carter. 

157 



So this significant word " personality " is 
the key to the deep mystery of the divine 
self-disclosure ; it fuses and welds together 
that seemingly double process of revelation 
and discovery. God is able to disclose his 
innermost self just when and where there 
is the deepest desire after him, the most 
persistent search for him, and within the 
sphere of personality which is simply the 
designation of self-conscious life, of life 
maintaining its identity and integrity 
through all changes ; just there God is able 
to come and speak to that which is most 
like himself. This is the secret of revela- 
tion, the meaning of incarnation. In the 
holy of holies of a human heart, where all 
is still and solitary, the eternal God asserts 
himself and speaks as he does not in the 
outer courts. 

Therefore when we have emphasized, till 
it will bear emphasis no longer, the fact that 
God is revealing himself in the external 
order of life, in all its secular traffic and 
intercourse, and that he speaks also in the 
silent life of nature, we are sure to come 
back at last and declare that "he was not 

158 



in the tempest, nor in the fire, but in the 
still small voice ;" we keep our profoundest 
reverence and respect for those revealings 
that have come to us through the mediation 
of human hearts who have listened to God 
in the silence and stillness of their souls. 

Is not this the truth that is dimly shadowed 
forth by that ancient holy of holies? It is 
not because God is inaccessible and remote, 
but because there are reserve elements in 
his being which can disclose themselves 
only when there is the earnest reaching out 
after him ; it is when the feeble hands and 
helpless reach out after God in the darkness 
that they are lifted up and strengthened. 
The eye that has groped for light, and tried 
to see in what light it had, has been met by 
the answering light, and its power of vision 
has been strengthened and enlarged. " The 
pure in heart shall see God." 

Perhaps we shall feel the force of these 
considerations more fully if we approach 
them from a different direction ; if we con- 
sider the corresponding relations and the 
similar order of reserve elements as they 
appear in the life of man ; for we can trace 
159 



in human life an order of relations parallel 
to these we have already noted. 

Our human lives also have their court of 
the Gentiles, within which move the less 
intense and permanent fellowships of life. 
There are the outposts of human fellow- 
ships within which we welcome the entire 
brotherhood of human interests. Over this 
court might fitly be inscribed the sentiment 
of the Latin dramatist, — "Nothing that is 
human is without interest to me." Here 
we meet and mingle with every brother 
man ; here the heart of our personal life 
makes its pulsations felt, but felt as we feel 
the heart of another in the warm and 
friendly grasp of the hand ; and here is the 
sphere of those social amenities, those tran- 
sient relations which have little permanent 
value, but may still be illumined by the 
light of kindness and human sympathy. 

But within this is the inner court, the 
shrine of the dearer intimacies, the nar- 
rower circle of the friendships which grow 
out of affinity of nature and of sympathy 
touching the main purposes of life. Here, 
also, the holy place, where is the altar of 
1 60 






home love, the kinship of hearts that are 
fused in the sacredness of love. 

But within even this sacred court is an- 
other, the innermost shrine of all, the 
holy of holies, the place where each of us 
must go alone if ever we touch the deepest 
possibilities of our own lives, going to 
which one must indeed "leave father and 
mother, husband and wife and child," that 
in the interior of his own personal life he 
may touch the heart of God. This is " the 
flight of the lonely soul to the only God." 
In man, as in God, there are reserve ele- 
ments of character and strength. One 
touches life at many points in the court of 
the Gentiles, but touches nothing there in the 
most intimate and interior way. In the nar- 
rower circle of friendships he does touch al- 
most the depths of the personal life, but the 
uttermost reserve is for the only One. A 
man must go into his closet and shut the door 
and pray, said Jesus, and the Father who 
seeth in secret shall reward him. And that 
great insight of Christ can not be set aside 
by any objection to prayer from the modern 
or any other standpoint, for it is an asser- 
ii 161 



tion of a more interior relation than the 
word prayer can possibly suggest to us ; it 
simply tells us how the secret springs of 
life are fed and sustained ; and whatever 
else may be true, it is without question true 
forever that the value and strength and 
beauty of a human life depend upon the 
reserve elements in its character, those ac- 
cumulations of wisdom and strength in the 
quiet hours of solitude which the confusing 
stream of life in the outer courts can not 
undermine. 

It is out of the consciousness of this ne- 
cessity of life that the psalmist declared : 
"My hiding place is in God." It was 
out of this consciousness that Christ gath- 
ered himself, first from the outer circles, 
and then from the inner circle of his dis- 
ciples, in his hours of trial and mental con- 
flict. "From the multitudes to the disci- 
ples, from the disciples to the chosen three, 
from the chosen three to the lonely God, 
within each narrower circumstance reveal- 
ing what could not be spoken in the wider, 
and at the point of last resort, unbound from 

162 



gftje ^zzzxwts of %ifz 

all reserve, and melted down as at the focus 
of an infinite light." 

Thus we have traced the working of 
this strenuous principle from opposite but 
converging directions ; God coming more 
and more from the external to the interior 
manifestation ; man forced more and more 
from the general fellowships and the more 
intimate friendships ; the two meeting at 
that focal point, the interior glowing depths 
of personality, that holy of holies where the 
creative insights and revelations have their 
origin. 

And the implications of it move down 
upon us with swift and tremendous force ; 
for if we are to cherish these reserve ele- 
ments of character, if we are to grow in 
the strength of that self-reliance which 
is at the heart of it reliance upon God, 
if we are to be established in the pur- 
suit of the true and the good and not 
blown hither and thither, we must cher- 
ish the value of the still hour ; we must 
make a place in our lives for those illumi- 
nating solitudes where we shall be able to 
restore our balance, to get possession of 
ourselves, to reinstate our ideals, to brush 
163 



away from us those confusions which spring 
up in the glamor and gossip of the outer 
courts ; even from the interior and dear re- 
lationships we must sometimes flee, remem- 
bering that we have allegiance to One upon 
whose right no other person may trans- 
gress ; that all other persuasions must some- 
times be set aside that we may hear dis- 
tinctly the voice that speaks to us in the 
holiest shrine. 

In these clamorous days, which keep us 
more and more in the outer courts of life, 
these days in which the old religious habits 
have lost their hold, it is the more impor- 
tant to cherish the truth which lay within the 
perishing husk of these customs and habits 
and bury it deep in our souls, that it may 
spring up into a new and better harvest 
than the old. When that new harvest ap- 
pears, the men out of whose hearts it 
springs will recognize its likeness to that 
which was springing, with such abundant 
and genuine growth, out of the heart of 
the Hebrew psalmist when he wrote our 
text, the words that voiced his own deepest 
spiritual need and its satisfaction, — My 
hiding place is in God. 
164 



gatiitxjgr Sims gxr fgitrje 

X 

TAKING TIME TO LIVE 

Isaiah xxviii. 16. — He that believeth shall not make 
haste. 

fPICURUS, the founder of the school 
and sect which bore his name, lived 
about three centuries before the Chris- 
tian era. He was born about the time that 
Plato died. From the philosophy of Epi- 
curus has come down to us the familiar 
maxim, — " Let us eat and drink, for to- 
morrow we die." Strange as it may seem, 
Epicurus and his disciples did not carry 
out this maxim after the manner of its 
usual interpretation. We could not exactly 
call them "epicures." The mode of life 
in their almost monastic community was 
severe and plain. Water and barley bread 
with a half pint of wine were the ample daily 
allowance. And once Epicurus wrote to a 
friend, — " Send me some Scythian cheese, 
so that if I wish I may fare sumptuously." 
Yet this almost ascetic philosopher was 

165 



galling S*mie $o ghn 

the author of the maxim. — " Let us eat and 
drink, for to-morrow we die.'' ;i The life 
that we have." Epicurus would say, " is this 
fleeting and perishing life of to-day ; this 
life of the body, which is sustained bv food 
and drink ; let us eat and drink then, in or- 
der that the body may be built up; let us 
make the most of it while it is here ; it is 
soon cut off and we are gone."' This life 
of the bodv Epicurus took with modera- 
tion and severity ; eating and drinking did 
not of necessity mean gluttony and drunk- 
enness. The loaf of barley bread and a 
half pint of native wine with the occasional 
delicacy of a bit of Scythian cheese would 
not carry a man very far on the road 
to debauchery. It was simply the tran- 
sientness of life that he would emphasize 
and the consequent need of making the 
most of it quickly. 

But of course the maxim of Epicurus be- 
came the ready formula of those who. 
admitting the transientness of life, were dis- 
posed to make the most of it in another 
sense. If life is transient, it is not worth 
making much of; therefore let us eat, drink 
1 66 



and be merry ; let us have a gay time and 
be done with it. 

This was in Athens twenty-two or three 
centuries ago. The cycles of history re- 
turn in a curious manner. Recently there 
came to me some copies of a little paper 
issuing from the "Athens of America." 
It is a frank avowal of paganism as 
against, not only Puritanism, but every 
expression of the spiritual life. It exalts 
the god Dionysos above all the deities in 
our pantheon. "The return of paganism 
is presaged," concludes one contribution, 
" the cult of the merry Dionysos is spread- 
ing." 

I do not know with certainty, but I sus- 
pect that the writer and editor of this little 
paper sustains himself on a diet hardly less 
simple than Epicurus's barley bread and 
Scythian cheese. Its epicureanism is of the 
head, heady. It is a passing phase in the 
vigorous intellectual life of a young man, 
who has reacted somewhat severely from 
traditional Puritanism. He interprets his 
maxims with moderation and sobriety. But 
there is a note at the end of the first 
167 



number to this effect : " We shall en- 
deavor to make this paper sought for by 
bons-vivants. Sellers of good wines, pro- 
prietors of first-class restaurants, and all 
other proprietors who cater to the bon-vivant 
are invited to notice the advantages of this 
paper. It is desired to build up a directory 
that shall be an index to Boston's op- 
portunities for relaxation and pleasure. " 

Thus history repeats itself. The doc- 
trine of Epicurus, whether interpreted with 
moderation or with excess, rests upon the 
fundamental belief that life is this life which 
we see and feel through sensation, and that 
when the organs of sensation have perished 
life has perished with them. Therefore, 
contrary to the counsel of the prophet, he 
that believeth this doctrine must make 
haste. We eat and drink and then, — to- 
morrow we die. 

Let us now pass on from Greek epi- 
cureanism to Roman stoicism, the stoi- 
cism which was represented by Seneca, 
Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. The meas- 
uring rod which they applied to life is con- 
structed on an ampler scale. Man must 
168 



live conformably to nature, was the stoic 
maxim. The haste was not so great ; he 
could take more time to build his life and 
could build with more deliberation. He 
must live conformably to nature. Yet the 
limit is sooner reached than we wish. 
Haste is not the final word, as with Epi- 
curus, but sadness, resignation and a cer- 
tain underlying sense of inevitable fate. 
"There are two things worth remember- 
ing," said Marcus Aurelius. " One is that 
nature treads in a circle and has much the 
same face through the whole course of 
eternity, and therefore it signifies not at all 
whether a man stands gazing here an hun- 
dred, or two hundred, or an infinity of years, 
for all that he gets by it is only to see the 
same sights so much the oftener. The 
other hint is that when the longest and 
shortest-lived persons come to die, their loss 
is equal ; they can but lose the present as 
being the only thing they have, for that 
which he has not no man can be truly said 
to lose." 

There are no lives which so well repre- 
sent the stern and heroic development of 
169 



gafcinrj gimz go giro 

Roman character as those two lives so 
like, yet so different, the slave and the em- 
peror, Epictetus and Aurelius. They have 
spoken words which well deserve to be em- 
bodied in the scriptures of humanitv. They 
have a strong and sturdv message to man- 
kind, which a sentimental Christianity has 
often ignored and repudiated, and as some 
one wiselv declared that he would rather 
be wrong with Plato than right with Aris- 
totle, so mav we. in a like spirit, prefer to 
be wrong with Marcus Aurelius than right 
with the weak and sentimentalizing inter- 
preters of the gospel of Christ. There are 
moods and crises in our lives when the 
brave words of the stoic slave and the stoic 
emperor hold our lives in firm assurance, 
like the anchor thrown out against the 
storm. The gospel of stoicism is also a 
braver and more resolute gospel than that 
of Epicurus: the background against which 
it throws our lives is the calmness and quiet 
of nature. Live conformably to that and you 
shall have peace. 

Yet, after all, and without question, it is 
the peace of sadness and of resignation. It 



has not seen through this appearance of 
things and transfigured it. It has not tri- 
umphed over the last illusion of life. "If 
the elements," says Aurelius, " are never 
the worse for running off into one another, 
what if they should all change and be dis- 
solved? Why should any man be concerned 
at the consequence? All this is but na- 
ture's method, and nature never does any 
mischief." 

This is the philosophy of stoicism, and 
when you have sifted it to the bottom its 
last word is resignation. 

Now when we turn to the higher litera- 
ture of our own time, we quickly perceive 
that much of it is touched with the spirit of 
stoicism ; the poets are always the chief 
witnesses of the spiritual temper of the 
time, and among the greatest of those who 
voice this renaissance of the stoic mood are 
such men as Tennyson and Clough and 
Arnold. They have spoken to us bravely, 
hopefully, even cheerfully at times, but 
there is a dominant note of sadness and 
resignation vibrating through all their song. 
There are the familiar lines of Arnold on 
171 



QxMuq Sim* go %im 

Self-Dependence. Let us listen to them 
once more : 

Weary of myself, and sick of asking 
What I am, and what I ought to be, 

At this vessel's prow I stand, which bears me 
Forwards, forwards, o'er the star-lit sea. 

And a look of passionate desire 

O'er the sea and to the stars I send : 
" Ye who from my childhood up have calm'd me, 
Calm me, ah, compose me to the end ! 

" Ah, once more," I cried, " ye stars, ye waters, 
On my heart your mighty charm renew ; 
Still, still let me, as I gaze upon j'ou, 
Feel my soul becoming vast like you ! " 

From the intense, clear, star-sown vault of heaven, 

Over the lit sea's unquiet way, 
In the rustling night-air came the answer : 

" Wouldst thou #eas these are ? Live as they. 

" UnafFrighted by the silence round them, 
Undistracted by the sights they see, 
These demand not that the things without them 
Yield them love, amusement, sympathy. 

" And with joy the stars perform their shining, 
And the sea its long moon-silver'd roll ; 
For self-poised they live, nor pine with noting 
All the fever of some differing soul. 

172 



" Bounded by themselves and unregardful 
In what state God's other works may be, 
In their own tasks all their powers pouring, 
These attain the mighty life you see." 

O air-born voice ! long since, severely clear, 
A cry like thine in mine own heart I hear ; 
"Resolve to be thyself; and know that he 
Who finds himself, loses his misery ! " 

They are very, very beautiful, but it is a 
melancholy beauty ; they are very consol- 
ing ; many of us have doubtless sought and 
found their consolation, but after all it is a 
consolation tinged with sadness ; it brings 
the peace of resignation, the peace which 
comes to the caged bird who, tired at last of 
beating its wings against the bars of its 
prison, settles down to its fated life. Resolv- 
ing to be that self which it is compelled to 
be, it thus at last " loses its misery." 

Now, as between these two, Epicurus 
and Aurelius, need one hesitate to choose? 
Does not the stoic offer us the braver and 
nobler life? Does he not offer us more re- 
pose, more time to build? Relatively to 
the other may we not say in truth, — He 
that believeth shall not make haste? 
173 



gatotxg Sim* $o %%nz 

But stoicism is not the last word. An- 
other round on the ladder of human des- 
tiny has been taken. The spirit of Chris- 
tianity advances upon stoicism even as 
stoicism advances upon epicureanism ; and 
Christianity most of all teaches us how to 
live without making haste. 

What has Christianity done ? I do not ask 
now what has the Church done ; what has 
theology done; what have the sects done? 
For underneath all the visible and organic 
movement is a spirit never exhausted, never 
quite interpreted to the full. What has 
Christianity, in the depth and fullness which 
that term shall one day convey to us, — 
what has it done for us? 

This it has done: it has raised life to 
the nth power ; it has brought man into 
the presence of the infinite and taught him 
to stand there, not appalled and crushed, 
but lifted up and strengthened ; it has 
taught him to live in the presence of the 
infinite and to live there with eagerness 
and joy. 

There are three facts which have been 
fundamental in life, — three ideas which 
174 



have haunted man and would not let him 
go ; with which he has had to wrestle 
until the breaking of the day. These three 
are God, the soul and immortality. Man 
has tried to grasp them up and unify them 
and see them under one principle. Chris- 
tianity has taught him how. It has given 
him an infinite Father, the essence of 
whose life is love ; it has given him an in- 
finite soul, a soul boundless in its aspira- 
tions and desires ; and it has given him an 
infinite time in which to work out the prob- 
lems of his life. 

These are the three things which have 
always been haunting man and they are 
all infinite, they are all eternal and they 
belong together; they show man, as he has 
never been shown before, that he has time 
to build his life in a splendid and enduring 
way. 

In the light of this we get a new interpre- 
tation for the words of Paul, — " If the dead 
are not raised let us eat and drink, for 
to-morrow we die." It is as if he said, — 
The choice is between looking at life as 
finite and looking at it as infinite. If it 
175 



gatonx* giro* gjcr gixrje 

is finite, why should you not strive for all 
the happiness and satisfaction you can get 
out of it ; why should you not push other 
men aside in the struggle, so that you may 
have more for yourself? Why be consider- 
ate and unselfish? That implies a larger 
scale of life than you admit. But if life is 
infinite, then there is time to build ; you are 
really only laying the foundations now, and 
you must lay them deep and build them 
strong. Think of what is to go above them. 
You can not afford to build hastily with 
hay, wood and stubble ; you must use gold, 
silver and precious stones. Other things 
count now beside happiness, satisfaction, 
and the quaffing of life's cup of joy. Just- 
ice and truth count ; fraternity and fellow- 
ship count ; you can not push your brother 
out of the way, for he too is infinite, he 
goes on with you ; he is part of the uni- 
verse ; he is included in your own destiny. 
In this thought of life as infinite, there 
are some other things that grow clearer. 
We begin to see light on the incompletions 
of life. It seems at times so incongruous 
and bewildering that just as we get ready, 
176 



as we think, to live well for ourselves, we 
must begin to live for the life of others. 
We come up out of the unconscious happy 
life of childhood ; we get our preparation 
for life ; we begin to feel how beautiful 
and worthy life is going to be ; and by and 
by we find a new home, our own home, 
and the cup of life is full to its brim. The 
home is the supreme ideal and the supreme 
happiness of human life ; and then, ere long, 
we learn that by God's appointment it is 
also life's supreme anxiety and care. We 
have struggled for life, and then begins the 
holy and anxious struggle for the life of 
others. Does it sometimes seem like a 
mockery, as if life were like the wine-cup 
which we are permitted to put to our lips 
only to pass it on down to the next gen- 
eration? Does it seem that man is fated to 
believe that life is a splendid and worthy 
possession only to find that it is not his 
own life that he is to possess and enjoy, but 
the lives of those who come after him which 
he is to think about and care for? If that 
is the endless labor of life, where does life 
itself appear as a reality and a possession? 
12 177 



QxMxxq gtme £0 gttre 

Is it not forever a phantom, fleeing from us 
just as we grasp it? 

You must say "yes," if you agree with 
Epicurus that life is this transient thing 
which you have in your own hand ; you 
must use it and make haste, for it will soon 
be gone and it is yours, your own solitary 
individual possession. 

But if life is infinite, then it is infinite not 
only in duration but in compass, in what it 
includes ; every family on earth and in 
heaven must be included in the calculation ; 
and the great cloud of witnesses must be 
reckoned as interested participants in our 
earthly race. 

Then may you build a home and take 
time to build your life into it, cementing it 
with cares and anxieties and tears and 
heartaches, for they too are a part of this 
infinite possession of life. 

There is also another mystery of life 
which here grows clear. On any other in- 
terpretation of life than this the great sacri- 
fices of history are contradictions and illu- 
sions. On any other ground I do not know 
what to say about Socrates going to his 
178 



death ; it seems like an awful waste of a 
splendid life. On any other ground I do 
not know how to interpret Gethsemane and 
Calvary. The cross seems to be the sym- 
bol of misjudged and misguided zeal. But 
if we can raise all these terms of life to the 
nth power, if we can think of it all as 
part of the eternal and infinite process, then 
we begin to understand what Jesus meant 
when he said, — "If I be lifted up I will 
draw all men unto me." The cross begins 
to symbolize, not the utter waste of life, but 
the gathering up of its fragments under the 
law of love. 

Then, last of all, do we not begin to un- 
derstand the great and solemn mystery 
of death which so invades our life and 
cuts short the thread, interrupts the tasks 
but just begun, makes the hand stiff and 
cold that was just beginning to create ; 
stops the active mind that was so eager to 
explore? It all seems so utterly perplexing 
and confusing ; it all is so, unless we learn 
to think of life as infinite, and then we can 
begin to say — 

179 



galling gimz $0 *Zixiz 

•• Our times are in His hand 
Who saith. — 'A whole I planned. 
Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, 

nor be afraid! ' 
******* 
My times be in thy hand ! 
Perfect the cup as planned ! 
Let age approve of youth and death complete 

the same! " 

There are two pictures now before my 
mind which shall sum up and complete the 
thought. 

I see here a great expanse of land, which 
to-morrow the government is to throw open 
by free gift to the first comers. Here, gath- 
ering and crowding up to the verv border 
line, is a motley crowd of place-hunters and 
land-seekers, waiting impatientlv for the 
signal on the morrow. Men and women, 
children, horses and cattle are in the me- 
lee : they trample upon each other ; they 
push each other aside ; they maneuver for 
the positions nearest the front : and then, at 
last, when the morrow comes and the signal 
is given, — what a scattering here and there ! 
Stakes are driven down, tents are raised, 
rude houses spring up like mushrooms and 
180 



in a few days there is the semblance of a 
town and the rudiments of corporate life. 
Those who heard the summons and be- 
lieved, in very truth did make haste. 

But I see another picture. The order 
goes forth one day that a great cathedral 
is to be built ; the plans have been matur- 
ing for years ; at last the plans are submit- 
ted to the builders ; the foundations begin 
to be laid. Down, down underneath the 
earth they go, solid and enduring as the 
hills from which a little while ago they 
came. Months go by and still the foun- 
dations have hardly reached the surface. 
And then walls, buttresses, roofs, towers, 
domes, pinnacles, groups of marvelous 
sculpture, take their place from time to time ; 
one generation succeeds another ; the hand 
that labored lovingly lingers and fails ; 
builders pass away and other builders take 
their place. Centuries after the founda- 
tions are begun, the great structure, symbol 
of the eternal and the infinite, is at last 
complete. The builders who received the 
order and who believed the message did 
not make haste. 

181 



Take these two pictures and tell me, — 
which of them would you have to be the 
symbol of your life ? 



182 



gft* Sttjestmusiifolje Gttxxx&t 

XI 
THE INEXHAUSTIBLE CHRIST 

John iv. ii — The woman saith unto him : Sir, thou 
hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. 

fACOB'S well and the errand of a wo- 
man thither from the town near by be- 
came the occasion of those deep and 
suggestive glimpses into life to which we are 
always returning to find some meaning 
which we had missed or misunderstood be- 
fore. The woman of Samaria, in her attitude 
toward the revelations of Jesus, was not un- 
like many another. Her mind was puz- 
zled and bewildered, struggling out of its 
crude and shallow conceptions of life toward 
some deeper thought which it but feebly 
grasped. 

It is what we always see where one 
who is dwelling upon a low plane of life 
tries to understand another whose plane 
of life is higher. The means of communi- 
cation from one mind to the other are diffi- 
cult and laborious. Words symbolize dif- 



ferent ideas to each. Language, perfectly 
simple and intelligible in itself, suffers trans- 
mutation and debasement from the alloy of 
a mind which has habitually dwelt among 
poor and unworthy conceptions of life. 

This woman of Samaria, hitherto weak, 
frivolous and thoughtless, must therefore 
falter and stumble over the threshold of 
utterances which were the doorway to 
thoughts of life of which she dwelt all un- 
aware. And she is not unlike many an- 
other, for it is the common experience to 
be struggling up out of crude and shallow 
conceptions of life. 

The words of Jesus mean something to 
many people in the world, but they mean 
many differing things. His ideas are 
clothed in common language, but in the 
process of becoming our own convictions 
and beliefs they are alloyed with whatever 
conceptions of life we already have. So the 
interpretation of Christ is a constant pro- 
cess of refining and purifying our own ideas 
of their dross. It is not strange that this 
woman took Jesus literally when he spoke 
in exalted and suggestive metaphors, for 



it is the fate which he has been meeting at 
men's hands from then till now, the fate of 
having the interpretation of the dead and 
formal letter put upon what was quicken- 
ing spirit, and alas ! also to be taken with 
the leniency of metaphor when he spoke 
with direct and burning literalness. 

But there is one expression of this Sa- 
maritan woman which, in its heedless mis- 
interpretation of Christ, stumbled into a 
pertinence of which she was not aware. 
Christ had spoken of the water which he 
was able to give, and in unfeigned surprise 
the woman replied, — " Sir, thou hast noth- 
ing to draw with, and the well is deep ; 
whence, then, hast thou that living water ? " 
Jesus was speaking of himself. She sup- 
posed him to be speaking of that well where 
they sat, or of some other of which she knew 
not ; but with reference to what she sup- 
posed him to mean she said, — " The well is 
deep." And as a description of what Christ 
had in mind, can you think of any expres- 
sion in all the world more true and apt, 
" The well is deep " ? 

It is an unconscious and unintended trib- 



gfre %nzxlxK\xstihXz (tilxxist 

ute to the depth and inexhaustibleness of 
Jesus ; and it is this of which I wish to speak 
to-day. 

There is nothing which becomes more 
apparent to us as we become acquainted 
with the intellectual and moral history of 
mankind than the transientness of human 
leaderships. The masters of the world be- 
come outgrown and superseded. We come 
at length to venerate their memories, to re- 
cord their words and their deeds, but we 
cease to follow them. We have exhausted 
them, simply because that conception of 
life which their own personalities summed 
up and grasped has yielded to the concep- 
tions of personalities fuller-orbed. 

Take the history of philosophy. Recall 
the names of Plato and Aristotle among the 
Greeks. We have recorded them among 
the constellations of philosophical thought. 
But neither Plato nor Aristotle is master of 
human thinking to-day. Their spirit abides. 
Something of their thought is final, but the 
mastership of philosophy has passed to 
other hands. 

Or come over into the external world 
186 



and recall the masters in science. What 
volumes of outgrown and exhausted theo- 
ries ! What lists of masters whose word 
is authority no more ! Even the names, 
which easily spring to the lips when one 
would mention the leaders, are names of 
men who were great in their time, distin- 
guished as pioneers, but whose special 
contributions are valuable to-day only as 
history. 

Then the masters in the world of religious 
thought, — how they also lose their master- 
ship because they see in part and must 
yield to others who see more deeply and 
clearly ! 

" Our little systems have their day; 
They have their day and cease to be : 
They are but broken lights of thee, 
And thou, O Lord, art more than they." 

Who is master in the world of religion 
to-day? Is it Augustine? Is it Luther? 
Is it Calvin, or Edwards or Channing? 
Masters they have been, all of them; mighty 
men in the spiritual Israel ; but they " saw in 
part," and to the one who calls any man on 
187 



She SttjesftaustilxU ©foist 

earth his master must come the inevitable 
fate of sharing with him the imperfect vis- 
ion, the relative and inadequate result. 

So in this realm of our life and in that, 
the masters are exhausted and surpassed. 
Men have found at last some way to reach 
even the deepest wells of their thought and 
have there quenched their thirst. 

But the thirst of man's mind and heart is 
infinite. Is there any where in all our life 
a well so deep that it can not be drained? 
Is there any master who can speak with 
imperishable authority and with a wisdom 
which is exhaustless? 

Let us think a moment and try to see in 
what such depth and inexhaustibleness 
must consist. Will it be in the facts which 
one has mastered and is able to communi- 
cate to other minds? Will it be the truth 
of teaching, the impartation of knowledge? 

When we look to see who have been the 
masters of mankind, we are easily con- 
vinced that one element of that mastership 
has been the power to teach, to communi- 
cate ideas, to reveal fact and truth which 
were not known before. Therefore the 



glue QuzxJxKVLZtxbU ©toist 

final and inexhaustible master, if such there 
were, would be a teacher. He would be 
able to impart to men truths and principles 
bearing upon their life. Such a teacher 
must be able to reveal those truths which 
are universal and perpetual in their bearing. 
He must speak to that which is eternal in 
the human heart. This will be the condi- 
tion of his inexhaustibleness as a teacher 
of men. 

Now in the brief accounts left to us of 
the life of Christ there is a considerable 
record of his teaching. How shall we 
describe it? It was not after the form and 
manner of the schools. It was not modeled 
after the rabbinical teaching of the Jews 
nor the philosophical teaching of the 
Greeks. It does not add very much to our 
positive information about the world or our 
own natures. But it addresses man's ca- 
pacity for what is universal, belonging to no 
special place ; for what is permanent, be- 
longing to no special time ; for what is 
human, belonging to no special race or 
condition. The constant impression which 
we get from the teaching of Jesus is that 
189 



£he Ineshaitstibte Christ 

it belongs to no place, to no age, to no race, 
because it belongs to all. And it is all this 
without losing that directness and enthusi- 
asm which are necessarv to make any 
teaching effective. 

Think for a moment of the difference in 
one or two particulars between Christ's at- 
titude to life and the attitude of others 
which seems to be like it. Take it in the 
matter of one's relation to country. Patriot- 
ism is something which is deep-rooted in 
human life. The Latin poet told us that to 
die for one's country is sweet ; and men 
have always believed it. Every child of 
whatever land comes to think that the flag 
of his land is the most beautiful of all. We 
have all felt the depth and value of the 
sentiment for native land in the pathetic 
story of " the man without a country." 

But Christ was not a patriot in the sense 
which we naturally attach to the word ; nor 
does his teaching justify a patriotism of any 
narrow and exclusive sort, the patriotism 
which fails to see the brother in the for- 
eigner, which justifies a national policy 
built upon the assumption that there is no 
190 



obligation toward the dweller in another 
land except to make the most possible out 
of him. The world was Christ's country 
and every man in it a fellow-citizen, and 
he meant it in no weak and meaningless 
sense, but in a sense rich and real. 

Yet after all there is something so differ- 
ent in this universal attitude of Christ from 
that attitude which we sometimes see in 
the men who are universal in a merely 
negative way ; who have no love for native 
land, no enthusiastic patriotism of the 
limited kind, but who have none of the 
enthusiasm for humanity, the deep and per- 
sistent human love which takes mankind 
up into the citizenship of a new and better 
country. Christ's teaching was in the very 
face of all those religious and political senti- 
ments of his time which gathered in such a 
proud and exclusive way about the chosen 
race. Yet no Jewish patriot of the intensest 
and most intolerant type could have wept 
over Jerusalem as Jesus wept. Think what 
a patriotism it was ! A patriotism which 
could see the universal relation through the 
local, which could keep the sense of a 
191 



3Clue 'gtxzxhKu&tibU Wlxxi&t 

world-brotherhood without losing intensity 
or interest in the smaller brotherhood. 
How immediate its bearing upon us all ! 
How full of lessons to our statesmen and 
leaders ! How it saves us from an indiffer- 
ence to the progress of righteousness in 
national affairs and from all blind and in- 
tolerant sectionalism ! 

Then in Christ's teaching respecting the 
family, we have another illustration of its 
permanence and absoluteness. Christ's at- 
titude to the family was like his attitude to 
country. He saw through the family idea 
and relation to that which it signified. 
" Who is my mother, and my brother, and 
sister," he said. "The one who doeth the 
will of God is my mother, and brother, and 
sister?" Does that seem like indifference 
to the tie which to us is so dear and sacred? 
Recall then in how many of his teachings 
Christ blessed the home, the family, the 
child-life blossoming from it, and how, even 
in the pains of death, he bethought him of 
his mother and besought for her a home 
with the beloved disciple. 

At this point, also, Christ's teaching 
192 



touches what is universal and permanent 
without losing what is real and immediate. 
He blesses the home, but saves it from its 
selfishness and exclusiveness. If he would 
regard with scorn and pity and sorrow, the 
infidelity, the shattered loves, the broken 
vows, the disregard of this most sacred 
relation, would he not also look with simi- 
lar feelings upon the selfish isolation in 
which so many homes are kept? Is it not 
once more the evidence of an inexhausti- 
ble teacher that his precepts bear constantly 
upon life with such force and vitality? 

Therefore, if we look only at the teach- 
ing of Jesus, we discover that " the well is 
deep." Christ's conception of life was an 
inexhaustible conception, and his teaching 
was the constant expression of that con- 
ception of life. 

But we must not speak longer of the 
teaching of Jesus. For his teaching was 
not the most significant element of his life ; 
it is never by itself the most significant ele- 
ment of any one's life. For teaching is 
one's self externalized. It is one's self 
gone out into a medium of utterance which 
13 193 



She IttxsJmustiMje CSftvist 

has an element of imperfection and which 
we never can be quite sure will adequately 
interpret the thought which lay in the 
mind. Words are material things, and 
when thought incarnates itself in language, 
by as much as it is deep and high thought, 
it empties itself somewhat of its glory and 
becomes poor in order that we, through it, 
may become rich. 

So one never quite gets to the fountain 
head of the life till he gets behind the teach- 
ing, behind the external deed, to the person- 
ality itself. The man is not reached in the 
citadel of his life till we get beyond what 
he says and what he does to what he is. 
Behind evety expression of the life is the 
life itself. Christ said of himself, with a 
recognition of this central fact of person- 
ality, " I am the Way, the Truth and the 
Life." 

It is here again that we discover the 
truth of the woman's words, — " the well is 
deep." Here, too, we get the intimation of 
that living water which Christ said he could 
give. 

The truth of personality is deeper than 
194 



all other truths. The constant impression 
which we are getting from a life is the 
true measure of that life. We know what 
a person thinks, what he would say, when 
we know what he is. The expression of 
the life, the attempt to communicate, is but 
the opening of so many doors into life 
itself. I need not ask for an expression of 
opinion from the friend whom I know deep- 
ly and intimately. My knowledge of him 
as he is becomes the clew to what he 
will say and do. In the highest sense 
the man must himself be the embodiment 
of all that he knows, and feels, and does. 
All this finds its highest exemplification in 
Jesus. Recall what he said to his disci- 
ples, — " I and my Father are one." Re- 
call what he said even more specifically to 
Philip, — " He that hath seen me hath seen 
the Father." 

This illustrates the difference between 
truth of teaching and truth of person- 
ality. Christ was not a teacher of the- 
ism. He gave his disciples no formal 
definitions. The references to God in his 
teaching were all figurative and drawn 
r 95 



^Txje ItxeslmttstiMje mxxist 

from the common relations of life, and 
as teaching they have a priceless value. 
Yet the deep and imperishable revelation 
of God which we get from Christ comes to 
us not so much through his teaching as 
through his personality. His thought of 
God was breathed out through his life, 
through the conscious identification of him- 
self with the divine life. The theological 
discussion over the nature of Christ has 
largely, on both sides, missed this central 
truth of the necessity of an embodiment in 
one's inmost, personal self of a deep and 
vital truth, before he can become a com- 
municator of that truth. 

We can find no analogies of a truth so 
great as this without seeming to belittle the 
fact which we would illuminate. But a 
suggestion of it we may get from other 
phases of life. 

Take the music of Beethoven, so great 
and profound. It is music which makes its 
appeal to deep and strong natures. All 
really deep souls, to whom music makes 
any appeal, turn lovingly to this great mas- 
ter. And they love him because he speaks 



through his language of tone to what is kin- 
dred in them. One must become identified 
with the spirit and life of Beethoven, must 
in a sense become Beethoven, to know and 
understand, and love that which is the ex- 
pression of himself. 

This is the explanation of our relative 
and changing tastes in a thousand other 
things. The sweet and simple songs of 
Longfellow are among the blessed memo- 
ries of our childhood. They appeal even 
to the immature period of life. There is 
an identification of our natures with that 
part of the poet's nature which appealed 
to us and revealed itself to us. Then 
at length in our later life we are interested 
and absorbed in other poets, who had no 
charm for us before, because their natures 
and their experience were too profound for 
us to grasp ; we were unable to become one 
with them. 

This is but a feeble hint of the truth 
we would convey that the knowledge which 
Jesus gave us of God, of human life, of hu- 
man duty, was what he gave us in his own 
personality. If a man knew Jesus deeply 
197 



Uhe Inexhaustible Christ 

and truly, he would thereby know what 
Jesus knew of God and of man. The secret 
of his life he could impart in no other way, 
just as you can impart the secret of vour 
own life in no other way. Therefore he said, 
* ; He that hath seen me hath seen the 
Father." 

Is not this the pledge and evidence of 
the inexhaustibleness of Jesus? If he had 
given us definitions of God which grew 
out of the philosophy- of his age and 
were formulated in its logic : if he had de- 
fined life and society after the traditions and 
types prevailing around him, would not his 
teaching have been affected by what was 
transient and partial in those forms? But 
if he has made his revelation through his 
personality, then we know God as Christ 
knew him : we know man as Christ knew 
him : we know human society as Christ knew 
it, when we know Christ himself; when we 
have such affiliation with his spirit, such 
companionship with his thought, as shall 
bring us within the atmosphere and influ- 
ence of his life. And we learn that the 
water which he gave men to drink was to 
198 



be in them also a well of water springing 
up into eternal life. 

Life is full of many perplexities and 
bewilderments. We talk about the theistic 
problem and the social problem. We feel 
the fog in our minds and the frost upon 
our hearts. We find it difficult to believe 
in God, difficult to live hopefully and 
bravely in the world. We seek wisdom 
from many masters, and they leave the final 
word unsaid, the deepest hunger of the 
heart unsatisfied. 

What was the secret of Jesus? How can 
he communicate to us his idea of God, of 
man, of ourselves, of the future? How 
can he shed light upon all the dark and 
painful riddle of our life? 

By what he said and did? Yes. But 
most of all, by what he was, which is in- 
communicable in even words or deeds. 
He knew God by that of God which was 
in him ; he knew man by what of man 
was in him. Neither by theology nor by 
social science can he impart to us that 
which was deepest and most real and most 
sure to him. But the living water which 
199 



gftje SitjesIiatistiMje ©Txvist 

he drank he can communicate by making 
it a well of water in our lives, springing up 
into eternal life. And we shall know as he 
knew. 

The spirit and the mind of Christ have 
as yet but a limited and feeble sway over 
human life. Other things have intervened 
to stay their influence. Men have had 
greater faith in their own verbal and sym- 
bolic interpretations of Christ than in his 
spirit. But the well is deep. Have we any- 
thing to draw with? Surely we have the 
capacity of our own hearts ; we have our 
sense of thirst. Let us make the venture 
of faith. "Lord to whom shall we go? 
Thou only hast the words of eternal life." 



pirating %ifz 

XII 
FINDING LIFE 

A Baccalaureate Discourse at Purdue Uni- 
versity, 1897 

Luke xv. 17. — But when he came to himself, he said: 
I will arise and go to my father. 

CX>HE parable of the prodigal son ap- 
4jLy peals so deeply to the heart, so 
^Njv touches our sense of pity and com- 
passion, that we are likely to overlook the 
breadth and inclusiveness of its teaching. 
We have so connected it with a definite 
aspect of human sin and waywardness that 
we miss of seeing how Jesus expresses in it 
his whole comprehensive doctrine of life. 
But this doctrine of Jesus was at once so 
simple and so inclusive that it almost in- 
evitably expressed itself in everything he 
said. 

What Mr. Arnold called the " secret of 
Jesus " is a secret which readily discloses 
itself. It did not reside in the singularity 
201 



of his teaching ; for again and again has it 
been shown that the maxims and precepts 
of Jesus are not only paralleled in the 
religious lore of other nations, but that for 
substance they are found in the sacred 
books of his own people. Nor did his 
secret dwell in any magic or miracle-work- 
ing power ; for he insisted with emphasis 
that it was an evil generation which sought 
after a sign ; and it is through a singular 
misunderstanding of Jesus that subsequent 
apologists for his faith have laid primary 
stress upon miracles. That is to emphasize 
the very thing from which Jesus was always 
seeking to withdraw emphasis. It is to 
fetter the human spirit with those very 
bonds of sensuousness and materialism 
which he was trying with all his might to 
break. 

No, the secret of Jesus is not within the 
sphere of knowledge nor within the sphere 
of power. The perpetual power of his 
revelation is in the absoluteness with which 
he brought together the life of man and the 
life of God. The pedestal upon which 
Jesus stands, and will continue to stand 
202 



&XU&XUQ %\tZ 

throughout human history, is the pedestal 
of religion ; and if, as Paul thought, the 
name of Christ is written above every other 
name, it is because the religious need, with 
its satisfaction, is the deepest and the most 
permanent of human needs. 

Now this most pathetic and appealing of 
Christ's parables comes back to this full 
and resonant key-note. The secret of Jesus 
reveals itself even when he talks about this 
common every-day occurrence and tells 
the story of a wayward lad who goes away 
from his father's house and has so pitiable 
an experience. He declares the one and 
only fundamental thing he has to say about 
any human life when he savs, in the course 
of the story, — " He came to himself," — and 
instantly adds, that when he came to him- 
self, as a part of his coming to himself and 
the very explanation of it, he also said, — " I 
will arise and go to my father." 

No man can at any time, or in any way, 
actually come to himself without finding 
also the inward compulsion and desire to 
" go to his father." No man finds his own 
life, his own genuine and ultimate life, 
203 



gittding gtfjc 

without finding it in the midst of those re- 
lations and in contact with that whole of 
life, that underlying and eternal unity of 
being, to which man reverently gives the 
name of God. This conviction is the most 
fundamental conviction in Christ's thought ; 
it is his contribution to humanity ; it is the 
key-note of his gospel. 

Let us observe it for a moment as it in- 
terprets itself in this parable. We are 
introduced to the characters in the story at 
the point when the younger of two brothers, 
resolving to see something of life, asks for 
his share of the father's estate and goes off 
by himself. For one romantic, intoxicating 
moment he seemed to have found himself. 
He was evidently saying to himself, — " I 
am my own master ; I know what I want, 
and I am going to have it ; I am going to 
enjoy this rich and glorious life to the full. 
I will ask my father for what is mine and I 
will see the world." 

How fitly this describes that moment of 

self-assertion which comes to so many r , that 

wilful, imperious assertion of one's self, 

that awakening to one's sense of individual 

204 



rights and freedom which seems so much 
like the real discovery of self, but alas is 
so very often just its opposite ! What can 
be better than to assert one's independ- 
ence? What can be more glorious than to 
declare one's ownership of his own life and 
his right to do with it as he will? It is just 
this imperious and boastful selfhood for 
which the younger son stands at the mo- 
ment of his leaving home. 

And the older son appears there in the 
story as an appropriate foil. Many have 
tried to exalt him as the obedient and duti- 
ful son, but he does not easily take on the 
luster of so great praise ; he is not an inter 
esting character ; his virtues are negative. 
He appears not to have noticed any negli- 
gence on his father's part until his own 
anger over the merry-making connected 
with his wayward brother's return reminds 
him of it. He seems to have plodded on in 
a matter-of-fact, indifferent sort of way, 
never to have had his brother's experience 
of wilful and wayward self-assertion and, 
so far as the story goes, never to have 
found the larger and truer discovery of 
205 



himself. It seems to show that a man may 
miss of discovering his true self, not only 
by the assertion of a false self, but by not 
awakening to any real sense of his self- 
hood. He may lose himself by going on 
the wrong road ; he may also lose himself 
by not going on any road. 

But the interest of the story continues 
with the younger son. When he asked for 
his share of the goods and went off to see 
the world he thought he had " come to him- 
self." He saw himself, his freedom and 
his happiness in that triumphant, proud, 
self-assertive moment, the self that cut 
loose without regret from home and family 
and the sacred associations of the past. 

There is dramatic emphasis, therefore, in 
the quiet words with which Christ opened 
the final act in this young man's career, — 
" when he had come to himself." So, then, 
after all it was not himself to which he had 
come in that earlier experience. It was 
not his actual and true life which he found 
when he gathered up his possessions and 
went off on his tour of pleasures. But it is 
the vision of his true self that dawns upon 
206 



him by and by, and that which stands out 
most clearly in the new vision, that which 
makes his heart throb with mingled hope 
and fear, is the memory of his father's house. 
The finding of the true self takes him 
straight back to the bonds and the fellowships 
which he had broken. The finding of the 
true self re-establishes relations and duties ; 
ties up the ends of life that had been sun- 
dered. Finding one's self is finding, not an 
isolated, assertive, independent self, but a 
self whose life must co-operate with other 
selves. It is finding sonship and father- 
hood. It is retracing all that mistaken, 
blundering way, and finding the father with 
his welcome and the household with its 
great joy, with its festal laughter and mu- 
sic. 

This is the fundamental doctrine of Jesus. 
It is the "C major" of all his music, and 
he can not tell the simple story of a way- 
ward boy, a story which still and for- 
ever pleads through its compassionate tones 
with all who are lost, as this boy was lost, 
without at the same time giving utterance 
to a doctrine of life which is as high as the 
207 



heavens and as deep as the sea. To find 
one's self is to find that self which, instead 
of isolating, unites in a wealth of interests 
and relations and it is all expressed in that 
simple and tender word, "I will arise and 
go to my father. 1 ' 

Now, this is so fundamental and inclu- 
clusive that I would have you view it apart 
from its relations to this special case of the 
parable where it finds only one of many 
applications. Let us dwell upon its appli- 
cation to the finding of life in wider rela- 
tions. 

First, it has an obvious bearing upon 
man's intellectual life. In reasserting the 
two great commandments of the law, Christ 
declared that man should love God not only 
with his heart and his whole soul, but with 
his mind. There is something very striking 
in this latter requirement, when you take it 
away from the rest and look at it by itself — 
loving God with the mind. We do not often 
think of love as in any real sense a function 
of the intellect. We think of the mind as 
solely concerned with the truth and as hav- 
ing no more to do with love and sympathy 
208 



than has the judge on the bench in his 
capacity as judge. To see clearly, to judge 
impartially, to pronounce according to the 
fact is the duty of the intellect of man. Is 
there, then, any genuine sense in which we 
may "love God with the mind?" 

We get some light upon this question 
when we consider the very great difference 
there is between the spirit of modern criti- 
cism and the spirit which prevailed a cen- 
tury or less ago. We almost need a new 
word to express this change of attitude. 
The critics of the old-time reviews were 
captious, bitter and violent. Their main 
object was to attack, to vilify, to destroy. 
Modern criticism, the criticism which is 
fast becoming the criterion of all legitimate 
use of the mind in this judicial capacity, is 
sympathetic and appreciative. Its object 
is to understand and to interpret what an 
author or an artist has done. It seeks not 
to condemn or approve from the standpoint 
of the critic, but to determine whether the 
man who is criticised has expressed himself 
with sincerity and strength. In our modern 
method of literary and esthetic criticism, 
14 209 



the method of appreciation, as contrasted 
with the former method of denunciation, we 
get a glimpse then of what it is for the in- 
tellect to work with sympathy and love. 
The mind loves when it sees things in the 
large way and tries to understand, not from 
its own exclusive standpoint, but from that 
of the other man. 

The old form of criticism was guilty of 
dividing the inheritance and going off into 
a far country. The better type is that which 
has come to itself and recognized its long- 
ing for that from which it had been too long 
sundered. 

Now we may let the activity of the mind 
within this sphere, which we measurably 
understand, illustrate its activity within the 
larger domain of the universe, that activity 
which we may rightly call the mind's love 
of God. 

Humanity dwelt so long in the heavy, 
stifling air of superstition, that it is little 
wonder the eager intellect of man at last 
broke away from its restraints, asked for a 
division of the estate and went off by itself. 
It is little wonder that this intellect has in 
210 



its sense of freedom found undisciplined 
and even riotous expressions of its energy. 
One can not help admiring the splendid 
audacity of the astronomer who declared 
that he had swept the heavens with his 
telescope and had found no God, — but the 
mental attitude of mankind is already so 
modified, that this triumphant doubter ap- 
pears in an almost ludicrous light. We 
feel like saying to him, — Why should you 
expect to find him in the heavens or use 
your telescope to aid you, unless he were 
first in the eyes with which you looked and 
in the soul whose organs of vision the eyes 
are? 

" No man can see more in a picture than 
he brings to it from himself," Ruskin 
declared. Likewise no man finds more in 
the universe than he brings to it from his 
own life. No telescope can reveal God in 
the starry heavens ; he is not there. No 
microscope can detect him in the ultimate 
cell ; he is not there. " All we have power 
to see is the straight staff bent in the pool." 
But ah ! if we could see and hear ! If this 
divine vision were first here within us, — 
211 



then in very truth would not he be in all 
this vision of sea and hill and plain, of flam- 
ing star and invisible cell? 

So through all this era of science, since 
the intellect of man broke away from super- 
stition, there has been splendid achieve- 
ment, but we need not hesitate to say that 
in this period the intellect of man has often 
worked in an isolated and haughty fashion ; 
it has compelled a division of the estate 
and gone away. It has helped to widen 
this chasm between the twofold life which 
ought never to have been twofold. 

But he is blind, indeed, who does not see 
how this side of life is coming to its truer 
self and beginning to think of the forgotten 
home and the father of the spirit. The in- 
tellect of man is beginning to act in the 
sympathetic and constructive way. 

One of the leading scientists of this coun- 
try, a man both fearless and reverent, has 
recently said what would not sound novel 
coming from an apologist of the traditional 
ideas but certainly has added weight com- 
ing from so unprejudiced a source. 

He relates that " a pulpit orator once 

212 



Ending %ttz 

conspicuous renounced his religion, because 
he would no longer serve a God who would 
do nothing for him. Because his prayers 
would not make him rich, or powerful, or 
famous, he would cease to pray. He be- 
came a lawyer, and entered the service of 
Tammany Hall, who could and doubtless 
did ' do something for him.' But this is to 
miss the whole purpose of prayer. Because 
it has no money value, because it will not 
bring rain or save a crop, or fill a church, 
or sell a drove of hogs, has it no purpose 
to you? Your life is more than crops or 
churches. The true purpose of prayer is to 
help us do God's will ; to make us happy 
because we do good deeds ; to make us 
strong because our prayers are God's pur- 
poses. Prayer is the expression of what 
may be called the human reaction; — and 
under the law of human reaction, cruelty 
gives place to love, intolerance and bigotry 
to sweetness and light, the sword to the 
dynamo and dogma to science." 

In such an attitude as this, and it is an 
increasing attitude, we discover a great 
reality of meaning in the mind's love 
213 



of God. We may dare believe that some 
day, when the intellect of the race has fully 
come to itself, the self of which it is con- 
scious will be, not the isolated self which 
asks for the division of the estate, but the 
related self which, with full and deep desire, 
cries out, " I will arise and go to my father." 
That day will be the day of man's greatest 
achievement and likewise of his greatest 
emancipation ; for the liberty of a fugitive 
slave can never be like the liberty of the 
son who dwells in the house of the father. 

But man is coming to himself in other 
realms than the intellectual. He is com- 
ing to a sense of larger selfhood in the 
organic world of society. "In the old 
days," a recent writer has said, "individu- 
ality, the right and duty of a human being 
to live his own life, to think his own un- 
hampered thought, to come to his own hon- 
est conclusion and to speak it out, had little 
place in politics or religion. Even the phi- 
losophers, into whose equations it entered, 
did not treat it as a universal vital fact. 
They looked at it as idle people looked at 
the steam which came out of the spout of 
214 



Ipudittg git t 

the kettle on the fire, and never dreamed 
what it could do. But in the sixteenth cen- 
tury, when powder and printing and Co- 
lumbus and Copernicus were added to- 
gether, individuality appeared at the foot 
of the column." 

These recent centuries have seen the 
reign of this individual ; have seen the great 
revolutions ; have seen man with his new 
consciousness of power and liberty demand- 
ing his own, claiming his full share of the 
inheritance and giving almost prodigal ex- 
pression to his life. There has been through- 
out an older son abiding at home ; con- 
servators of ancient customs in state and 
church, who seem not to have dreamed 
that anything was going on, or that the 
household was divided, or at most waiting 
for the prodigal brother to return and ac- 
cept obediently the ancient conditions, as 
when the holy pontiff at Rome now and 
then holds out a gracious hand to his rebel- 
lious brethren. 

But in the social world this kind of re- 
turn is forever impossible. The assertion 
of the individual has been too significant ; 
215 



the revolutionary influences have been too 
radical ; the emancipation has been too 
complete. The lines of progress have been 
extended by the individual ; the triumphant 
achievements of the recent centuries are 
the result of this new and vigorous asser- 
tion of the individual man. 

But already are there indications of a 
new expression of the "human reaction" 
upon the world, a reaction which is disclos- 
ing the fact that individualism, with all its 
truth and all its triumphs, is not the final 
condition. The man who is coming to him- 
self is the social man, and in the heart of 
the social man is the imperishable hunger 
for the father's house. The social man is 
learning that it is impossible for man to live 
alone ; that he neither liveth nor dieth to 
himself. He is discovering, with surprising 
rapidity, that the isolated life is not only 
false but that it is impossible ; for this man 
who asserted himself with such independ- 
ence, who launched himself upon the crest 
of the revolutionary wave with his proud 
boast of equality and freedom and rights, 
is learning that he is not isolated, but 
216 



related ; he is discovering that his best and 
dearest life is a life which holds him within 
a vast network of human interests. Take 
the individual man away from his relation to 
the family and the state, away from the as- 
sociations of friendship, of toil and of faith, 
what would he be? Would any man be left 
to boast and prate? The era of individual- 
ism is emerging into the era of personalism, 
and it is the very essence of personality to 
know and recognize its relations. The 
man, wakening to consciousness of true 
personality, at once declares, " I will arise 
and go to my father's house." 

What the ultimate social form is to be, no 
man is yet wise enough to predict. And 
who need care? One may well cherish the 
splendid unconcern of Jesus regarding 
details, for he said, " The day and the hour 
no man knoweth, but only the Father." 
The one thing to be sure about is that the 
kingdom of God, the true life of man, will 
ultimately prevail ; and who can doubt that 
this dawning consciousness of the social 
self is higher and truer than that of the 
former individual self; that we see in it one 
217 



more indication that man is surely awaken- 
ing to himself? 

Finally, I would affirm the same truth in 
the realm of the ethical life. Man is awaken- 
ing to the conviction that the moral life and 
the religious life are inseparably united. 
Man is destined to know that he can not 
order his conduct aright without arising 
and going to the house of his father. 

The connection between morality and 
religion is a much vexed question, perhaps 
unnecessarily sophisticated. 

Can man live a moral life and not be 
religious? If by that, one wants to know 
whether a man can be honest and truthful, 
can display justice, friendship, affection, 
integrity, without acceptance of the forms 
of religion, it is hardly necessary to raise 
the question. The world is too full of peo- 
ple who are daily demonstrations of its 
truth to make it worth while lingering over 
it. 

Moreover, if by religion one means the 

maintenance of historic forms of belief and 

of historic symbols, there is a great variety 

of reasons why men of irreproachable 

218 



character are not religious. If, too, by be- 
lief in God one means to specify the lines 
of approach to speculative definitions of 
the Divine Being, there are many reasons 
of strength and urgency why multitudes 
who feel the spirit of the age do not believe, 
or suspect they do not believe, in God. 

But the whole question needs raising to 
a higher plane, demands consideration in 
a clearer light. 

What is morality? It is conduct and 
character determined by the laws and facts 
of the world in which man lives his moral 
life. And religion, what is that? Is it not 
based, as Benjamin Stillman the great 
chemist said, upon the recognition of " a 
power in the universe good enough to make 
truth-telling safe and strong enough to 
make truth-telling effective" ? 

It is certain that man's moral life must 
have for its foundation the permanent real- 
ity of things ; it must rest upon ultimate 
and adequate fact ; for it has been well said 
that " man can not accept as the standard 
of his life an ideal which is not in absolute 
harmony with the ultimate principle of the 
219 



universe ; nor even if he did, could his ef- 
fort to realize it be anything but the strug- 
gle with an alien power too strong for him, 
a struggle as futile as the attempt of the 
Teutonic giant of the northern Saga to lift 
the deep-seated earth from its founda- 
tions." 

Morality is character based upon things 
as they are ; and religion, can we sa}^ any- 
thing truer about it than this, — it is the 
recognition of " the God of things as they 
are." 

In recent years there has arisen a group 
of associations known as ethical culture 
societies. They originated in a need which 
the church was not supplying. The church 
had crystallized into dogma or vaporized 
into sentiment and was in danger of ignor- 
ing the moral life, which is at the very basis 
of things. Therefore the ethical culture 
movement is a standing testimony to the 
partial apostasy of the church, which by 
right ought to be the one adequate univer- 
sal human society. 

The value of these associations lies in 
the fact that they have helped to recover 
220 



the interests of the moral life, to re-estab- 
lish the claims of character. When they 
declare themselves to be a substitute for 
religion, they merely show how easy it is to 
take a part for the whole. 

The aim of life may be summed up in 
this, — the development of character in ac- 
cordance with standards and ideals which 
correspond to the whole fact, the entire 
and permanent reality of things; and that, 
I submit, is to establish it upon the religious 
basis. " God made us for himself, and our 
hearts are unquiet until they find their rest 
in him." 

Here, then, in these three realms, the in- 
tellectual, the social and the ethical, are 
the evidences that humanity is coming to 
the discovery of its own larger and worth- 
ier life ; it is in each instance a discovery 
which discloses new relations and awakens 
the desire in man to seek the source of 
those relations, to find the unifying princi- 
ple of life, to find his peace. The ultimate 
answer to man's persistent questionings is 
the religious answer. 

Something in man's life is left unsatisfied 
221 



until he gets an answer to the haunting 
question, — ' k When shall I come and appear 
before God?" 

And that answer must be given not in 
terms of the intellect alone, nor in terms of 
the emotion, but in terms of character and 
life, the answer which Jesus found when 
he declared, — " It is my meat to do the 
will of mv father." 

It is not in the interest of pietism, but in 
the interest of full-orbed character and of 
fruitful and abundant life, that I would have 
you believe and see with growing clearness 
that when humanity comes fully to itself it 
will certainly and inevitably say to its own 
heart, — " I will arise and go to mv father/' 

And now, young men and women of the 
graduating class, let me say the last word 
to-day directly and especially to yourselves. 
You stand here to-day at the meeting-point 
between the university and the world ; you 
are at the point of discovering how far the 
university has fitted you for the larger in- 
terests of actual life ; you are at the point 
where you shall begin to demonstrate to 



Winding %ifz 

society whether the university has helped 
you to the finding of life. 

Every age has its own ideals, and the 
university has, in every age, been a power- 
ful instrument in the preservation and main- 
tenance of those ideals. We must acknowl- 
edge with gratitude that the closing years 
of this century in our country are witness- 
ing a development of the university which is 
making it a more adequate expression of the 
democratic ideal. The university is throw- 
ing off the scholastic robes and putting on 
the garments of the athlete. It is more and 
more disabusing itself of the charge of fur- 
nishing a culture which is special, exclu- 
sive, aristocratic and, of necessity, adapted 
to the few, the men of leisure, the men of 
wealth, the men of the so-called learned 
professions. 

The university is becoming not only uni- 
versal in the scope of its material, but in 
the constituencies which it draws to itself. 
It is becoming like the gospel which Paul 
proclaimed, which recognized neither bond 
nor free, Jew nor Gentile, male nor female. 
The university is happily leaving the cloister 
223 



and coming out into the open. The ad- 
mission of women into almost every college 
in this country, the spread of the university 
extension principle, the multiplication of 
those courses which deal with the arts of 
life capable of extending human happiness 
and welfare — all these are illustrations of 
what we may call the democratizing of the 
university. 

You are to be twentieth century men, 
and I congratulate you upon the promise of 
its dawn. Had you lived at the close of the 
eighteenth century, you would have heard 
the calls to freedom resounding in your ears ; 
you would have heard the appeals to enlist 
in the service of human rights and liber- 
ties ; you would have felt the exhilaration 
of revolution stirring in your veins, and, 
perhaps, you would have responded to the 
sentiment of Samuel Adams, who, when he 
heard the firing of the first shots of the 
Revolution on Lexington Common, said to 
his friend Hancock, — " What a glorious 
day is this ! " 

But if you respond to the possibilities of 
our own closing century, you may say with 
224 



better right than Samuel Adams said, — 
" What a glorious day is this ! " 

I say, if you respond to the possibilities of 
our own time, for if we look superficially, 
there is perhaps much to depress and occa- 
sion doubt of the immediate future. The 
degrading influences of our time are very 
intimately connected with these possibili- 
ties for highest good. We are having, as 
never before, a return to actual life ; the 
university is, as never before, serving the 
actual life, and this, of necessity, is causing 
a tremendous emphasis to be placed upon 
the external and material conditions of life. 
And herein is both the peril and the prom- 
ise of the new century. 

A well-known journalist has recently ut- 
tered a truth important enough to cause 
a halt for a moment at any rate. He de- 
clares that " the century opened with three 
million Americans who loved liberty and is 
about to close with seventy-five million who 
love money." 

If this is the true description of our age, 
is it not a record of infamy and recreancy 
to high ideals which must make us blush 
*5 22 5 



with shame? If all this new awakening of 
intellectual life and the return of the uni- 
versity to actual conditions is to result only 
in a more splendid material prosperity and 
in that accentuated selfishness born of ab- 
sorption in material interests, — then is not 
our condition fearfully like that of the son 
who called for his share of the estate that 
he might make of it a riotous and prodigal 
use? 

If the return to actual life obscures the 
vision and paralyzes the arm of service, 
then were not the atmosphere of the cloister 
as wholesome as that of the open? Were 
not the poverty of the opening century, 
with its love of freedom, infinitely better 
than the riches of its close, if that close be- 
hold only the blinding love of pelf ? 

It is forever true, young men, that ' ' where 
there is no vision the people perish." The 
crying need of every age is for the man of 
ideals, and I say that you men who are to 
shape the life of the twentieth century have 
the opportunity of re-creating the ideal out 
of the material in your hands. It is yours 
to disprove the mediaeval fallacy that the life 
226 



of the spirit and of ideals can be nourished 
only in the cloister. It is yours triumph- 
antly to prove that these material conditions, 
to which now we are returning with such 
force, have in them the possibility of trans- 
mutation into noble life. 

If these tendencies which I have pointed 
out to-day do actually exist, tendencies in- 
dicating that humanity is coming to its 
better self, coming to the discovery that 
this is a divine universe and is growing more 
and more toward a divine humanity, a hu- 
manity of love and service, of great aspira- 
tions and high ideals, — then I beg of you 
to throw yourselves into the current of this 
tendency ; find your inspiration, your hope 
and your ambition in what it portends. 
Let it individualize itself in your own lives, 
so that perchance here to-day, upon one of 
the epochal days of your lives, you shall 
find your own hearts responding to the 
divine call to arise and go to the house of 
your father, — this great house all around 
us, in which, for all true and loyal hearts, 
there is endless opportunity for endless 
service. 

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